Havre de Grace and Perryville are on the road to becoming a link in a major bike trail that would take cyclists from Calais, Maine, to Key West, Fla.
Signage for the planned 2,900-mile East Coast Greenway is reaching Delaware, and Havre de Grace city leaders announced Monday that Greenway organizers told them signs would eventually be coming to their town.
All funding would be covered by East Coast Greenway Alliance, which is based in Durham, N.C., Havre de Grace tourism manager Brigitte Peters said.
The project could bring even more visibility to the Susquehanna River region, on top of a new system of tourism signs by Maryland's State Highway Administration that will promote tourist stops, historic sites and other local attractions.
That system, called the Tourist Area and Corridor Signing Program, would lead drivers on I-95 and other major highways to attractions and is set to be completed by 2016, Peters said.
"It's very complementary of our situation," Peters said of the Greenway and Tourist Area and Corridor signage, which would be two different systems of signs.
"Technically, we are in a great position now, where all of our signage is going to be cleaned up," she said.
Nearly 30 percent of the massive planned trail system is "on traffic-free greenways, creating safe, accessible routes for people of all ages and abilities," according to the Greenway Alliance's website.
The section proposed for Havre de Grace would take cyclists from the Route 40 bridge through the waterfront, down St. John Street to Tydings Park and around Revolution Street before heading west through Chapel Road, Canvasback Drive and along Level Road.
A bike lane on the Hatem Bridge is a major project for the Greenway Alliance, and the organization has gotten 8,945 signatures on a petition on Change.org to ensure the new bridge planned by Amtrak will accommodate cyclists and pedestrians.
The Alliance is leading the Susquehanna Safe Crossing Coalition to push for such a connection.
"Help us overcome one of our biggest challenges, the Susquehanna River crossing in Maryland!" the Alliance states on its website.
The petition notes that "in the state of Maryland, there is no safe way to cross the Susquehanna on foot or by bike" and the "closest safe crossing is in Pennsylvania, over 42 miles upstream from Havre de Grace."
The Maryland route envisions cyclists entering at Newark, Del., and heading west to Perryville, around the point at Perry Point VA Medical Center.
"Continuing west beyond the Susquehanna, travelers cross rural Harford County to Monkton and the first designated trail segment – the Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail [NCO]," the website reads.
Harford County spokesperson Cindy Mumby said the Greenway is expected to pass through state roads in the county but she did not know more about when the signs might come in.
Peters hopes the Greenway, if it makes it across the water, will especially help bring more people between the ages of 25 and 40 to town.
"That is a strong demographic we want to see pulled into the city," she said, adding bike routes and rails-to-trails systems can have a powerful tourist impact.
"I have done these routes and I have done this traveling, through St. Michaels, and it's definitely an economic impact," she said. "They bring these riders into a small town. They will stop, they will have coffee, they will see the attractions."