Project initiated by area citizens

Residents of Laverock, a quiet, wooded community tucked out of the way between Cheltenham Avenue and Route 73, turned out Aug. 9 to ask the Springfield Township Board of Commissioners just what was going on.

They wanted to know about plans for the Cresheim Trail, a hiking and biking path proposed for PECO-owned land along Ivy Hill Road and Route 309.

Preliminary maps showed the trail running behind the houses on Newbold Lane, and the residents said they opposed it because it would change the character of their neighborhood.

Most of all, they wanted to know who was in charge of the project, and why no one seemed able to give them definitive answers to their many questions about parking, access, hours, lighting and policing.

"It's all questions," Cleveland Mair, a resident of Newbold, said this week. "Things happen, and you don't know they're happening, and by the time you try to influence them, you're too late."

The township commissioners promised to share any information they might obtain, but they had little to offer, because they are not directly involved in planning the trail.

At present, neither is Montgomery County, even though a rough map of the trail has been lying in a file in Norristown since 1996.

The real planners and advocates for the trail are private citizens calling themselves the Cresheim Trail Committee.

Several of the group's 10 to 15 members live in Springfield, according to Chairwoman Beth Ounsworth, but its roots are Chestnut Hill.