Editorial: Follow the path to economic development
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A trail can be more than just a track worn through the grass and the dirt by a thousand other travels.
A trail can be something that gets you where you need to go — the breadcrumbs you follow to get home, the yellow brick road that takes you to your goal.
And local walking and biking trails are showing the way to some economic growth.
According to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, the walking and biking trails that were created along railroad rights-of-way aren’t just passive paths. They are pumping $930 million into the Pennsylvania economy.
That’s good in more ways than one.
Pennsylvania can definitely use more ways to boost its economy, especially something that capitalizes on the natural beauty of a state long known for its manufacturing centers. As manufacturing shrinks, other industries become more and more critical, and one of the most significant could be the travel and tourism sector.
In 2018, the Great Allegheny Passage brought in almost a million visitors. A 2008 impact study put its revenue at $40 million, which isn’t hard to see when you realize the trail created 65 businesses and generated 270 jobs in an eight-year period.
And all of that comes from nothing as complicated as an amusement park or as orchestrated as a professional sports team. It’s just taking the path already snaking through the countryside, cut by winding strings of engines and rail cars, and making a safe, easy way to take a walk or ride a bike.
Maybe sometimes people make economic development more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe it can be as simple as looking at what is available and thinking of the easiest way to make it into something new instead of the biggest or the most impressive.
And if a trail is something other people can follow to find their way, maybe the success of the Rails-to-Trails projects can be the breadcrumbs someone else uses to renovate an old mall, a former hospital or a struggling downtown.