LYNN — The Northern Strand Multimodal Path project is nearing completion, as representatives of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the city, and other project partners gathered at the Carroll Parkway to break ground on the last stretch of the trail Thursday.
“This is a huge project. It’s a big deal, and it expands… it gives us more options, it broadens and expands what we think about when we think about transit and transportation,” Mayor Jared Nicholson said. “It’s expansive in the sense that it’s adding modes of transport, making it easier, in this protected lane, for bikes and for pedestrians.”
Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Undersecretary Stephanie Cooper said that the project consists of a newly designed and constructed 10.5-mile trail, which opened in 2022 and will stretch from Western Avenue to the Mystic River.
“It is about connection, but it’s also about making good on the commitment that everybody should have a place to get outside, to get a breath of fresh air, to relax, to exercise, to connect with the nature that’s around us,” Cooper said.
The last stretch of the path has a total length of 1.9 miles, and begins at the current terminus of the Northern Strand Path at Western Avenue and continues along Market Square, South Common Street, the Lynnway, and Nahant Road.
The final path will connect six communities with a non-motorized transportation option for travel and recreation.
“It’s broad and expansive in that it’s taken decades for it to come to fruition, and it wouldn’t have happened without us reaching across to one another and building these coalitions and partnerships,” Nicholson said. “When we think expansively and broadly, I think, follow the advice of one of America’s greatest poets, Walt Whitman, in his ‘Song of the Open Road’ — ‘To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.’”
MassDOT Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver then introduced Agnes Recato, the program manager of the nonprofit organization Bike to the Sea. Gulliver said that since 1993, Bike to the Sea’s mission has been to create the trail to provide a car-free route from Everett to the beaches of Lynn and Nahant.
“This project is a realization of the vision of our organization’s founders, and over 30 years of persistence of advocacy,” Recato said.
Also at the groundbreaking ceremony were MassDOT Board member and former Mayor Thomas M. McGee, MassDOT Secretary and CEO Monica Tibbits-Nutt, District Highway Director Paul Stedman, and many local elected officials.
Gulliver thanked everyone in the crowd for celebrating the project and invited them all to the planned ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2026.
