Laura Davis laughs as she ticks off all the ways she’s built her family’s life around the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail in Concord.
“I basically moved everything in my life to West Concord so I could get to it on a bike,” said the 35-year-old Concord resident. “So, my dentist, my doctor, the barber, we do most of our shopping at Debra’s or Trader Joe’s. We use the bike path to go to Staples. I am coming here with my husband on the bike tonight for a date night at Wood’s Hill Table” restaurant.
Kim Kelly, a resident of Brookside Square apartments on Beharrell Street in West Concord, walks 10 miles on the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail every day. “I love it,” she said on a recent breezy May morning. “I call it the cheapest gym membership in town.” She also loves how multi-generational the trail is. “It’s very family friendly. What I love is there are always teenagers on it. It’s really inspiring. They could be inside playing video games.”
Davis, who had just dropped her 6-year-old son at Concord Montessori School on Domino Drive and was peddling to a Transportation Advisory Committee meeting where she serves as a volunteer, said she sees this leg of the BFRT as vital to the vision of a connected Concord. “We don’t have a lot of long, continuous, safe places for people to walk and bike separated from traffic,” she said from the center of the Junction Park gardens, next to favorite breakfast stop Club Car Café. “As a cyclist who uses the bike for transportation, I need that path to get [around] safely.”