West Hartford’s Engineering Division has advised the roadways slated for the second round of repaving, beginning the week of July 9, and has also provided updates reconstruction projects underway in 2024.

Construction on Phase 5 of Trout Brook Trail, from Jackson Street to to Park Road. Photo credit: Ted Newton

By Ronni Newton

The final planned segment of West Hartford’s Trout Brook Trail is under construction, and when it’s paved this fall the nearly-4-mile linear park will be completed.

By the end of 2023, all but one section of the Trout Brook Trail was officially open for use by the public, but he most complicated section – what’s technically called Phase 3 and located roughly in the middle of the overall trail – was saved for the end. The 3,900-foot section from Jackson Avenue to Park Road requires narrowing of Trout Brook Drive, and includes navigating an I-84 overpass.

Construction on Phase 5 of Trout Brook Trail, from Jackson Street to to Park Road. Photo credit: Ted Newton

“It should be completed by the end of October,” Town Engineer Greg Sommer said Thursday.

Design work on Phase 3 was completed earlier this year, and the construction, which is grant-funded, is being done by Roma Construction of Canterbury, CT.

Work on the trail has been underway for. more than 15 years. It has been built in phases, and once will eventually extend from New Park Avenue to Asylum Avenue. The phases are numbered by blocks – each about a half-mile in length – from south to north, but have not been built in numerical order. The first phase to be completed, Phase 4, which runs between Park Road and Farmington Avenue, opened in 2008. Phase 1, from New Park to South Quaker Lane, opened in 2009.

Phases of Trout Brook Trail. Town of West Hartford website

Design of final phase of the Trout Brook Trail, from Jackson to Park. Town of West Hartford bid documents

Phase 2, which begins near Beachland Park on South Quaker Lane and ends at Jackson Avenue along Trout Brook Drive, was completed in 2015, and Phase 5 was completed in 2022.

Phases 6 and 7 were completed last fall, and brought the trail to what’s currently its northern terminus at Asylum Avenue. The plans for the development of Heritage Park by West Hartford 1 LLC call for extension of the trail through the former UConn campus, but although a wetlands permit has been granted, the complete application has not yet been submitted to the Town Council for review. The section through Heritage Park would be Phase 8.

Trout Brook Trail sign at point at which the Trout Brook Trail previously had a break, and where the final phase is now under construction at Trout Brook Drive and Jackson Street. Photo credit: Ronni Newton (we-ha.com file photo)

Prior to the continuation of the Trout Brook Trail from Jackson Street to Park Road, users of the multimodal trail needed to cross Trout Brook Drive at Jackson Street. Photo credit: Ronni Newton (we-ha.com file photo)

Road resurfacing

Road construction season for 2024 began in May in West Hartford, with the second round of resurfacing beginning on July 9, and the final round scheduled for September, while reconstruction projects also remain in progress.

The Engineering Division has announced that the following roadways are tentatively scheduled to be repaved in the final found for 2024, and Sommer said work is expected to begin on Sept. 16:

• Bainbridge Road (Penn Drive to Steele Road)
• Cumberland Road
• Edmund Place
• Foxcroft Road
• Middlebrook Road (Penn Drive to North Quaker Lane)
• North Quaker Lane (Fern Street to Asylum Avenue)

Additional streets may be added pending on-going utility coordination, according to the Engineering Division’s website.

Repaving projects generally take two to three weeks from start to finish.

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