Projects visitation starting in 2033
After 14 months of work, the Visitation Data Committee, an independent group representing Philipstown, Beacon and Fishkill, has approved a report for the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail.
The committee, created by HHFT to review its traffic and pedestrian data and projections for the proposed 7.5-mile linear park between Long Dock Park in Beacon and Dockside Park in Cold Spring, met for the first time in August 2023 at Little Stony Point.
The 11-member committee selected and worked with BFJ Planning to examine trends in visitation throughout Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve — which includes Breakneck Ridge, Mount Beacon, Denning’s Point, Little Stony Point and Bull Hill — to project how the Fjord Trail might affect visitation. It includes representatives from Cold Spring, Nelsonville, Philipstown, Beacon and the Town of Fishkill.
The Fjord Trail is projected to be completed by 2031, but the report’s projections begin in 2033. The committee considered the first two years the trail will be open as “surge years,” with higher visitation than usual because of the park’s novelty.
The report also differentiates between “visitors” and “visitation.” The former refers to individuals who will use the trail at any time over a year, including locals. The latter refers to the number of visits. As an example, a resident of Cold Spring who walks on the Fjord Trail five days a week, 52 weeks a year, would count as one visitor but 260 visits.
Based on data collected last year, the committee estimated that 55,550 people made 440,400 visits to the trails and parks that make up the Fjord Trail corridor. Notably, visitation at Breakneck Ridge has fallen drastically over the past three years, with nearly 37,000 fewer hikers in 2023 than 2019.
The report projects that the Fjord Trail will add 268,700 visits a year by people who would not normally come to the connected parks and trails. That’s an increase over the HHFT’s projections of 204,900 visits a year. The visits would not all occur at any one point along the trail, such as Cold Spring, it noted.
With the Fjord Trail, the committee calculated the visitation in 2033 in the corridor at 637,000 (including residents, cruise ship passengers and hikers at Breakneck Ridge and connecting trails and parks).
Data Committee Members
Henry Feldman, James Labate (Cold Spring); Phil Cotennec, Jeff Robins (Philipstown); Mayor Chris Winward (Nelsonville); Council Member Amber Grant, Sarah Mencher, Zack Smith (Beacon); Council Member Greg Totino, Planning Board Chair Jon Kanter, Supervisor Ozzy Albra (Fishkill)
To project future visitation, the committee looked at numbers over the past several years from similar linear parks, including Walkway Over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie and Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River Walk and Buffalo Valley Trail. It also looked at the increase of visitors recently to the Hudson Highlands, Palisades and Taconic state parks and weighed the Hudson Highlands State Park’s easy access via mass transit.
This led to the projection that, over the next 10 years, visitation at Hudson Highlands State Park will increase by an average of 3.2 percent per year, regardless of Fjord Trail development.
The report also projects that 225,900 of the 637,000 visits will be hikers using the Fjord Trail to reach nearby destinations such as Breakneck or Bull Hill and not spending a significant amount of time on the Fjord Trail itself — a situation called “captured visitation.”
There’s also “shifted visitation,” which is visits to the Fjord Trail instead of adjacent parks and trails. The report estimates this will be 31,900 annually, a relatively low number because it expects the Fjord Trail will be a different experience than hiking Breakneck Ridge or Mount Beacon.
Reviewing past visitation numbers, the committee determined that the busiest month of the year for the Fjord Trail corridor is October, followed by September and May. The busiest time for hikers to arrive is between 10 and 11 a.m. on weekends, with peak visitation between 2 and 5 p.m.
The studies reviewed and approved by the Visitation Data Committee, including a traffic and visitation report (online at dub.sh/HHFT-traffic) will be included in the state environmental review of the Fjord Trail, which is expected to be released later this fall. The visitation report can be found online at dub.sh/HHFT-visitation.
I was unaware of the idea of adding two lanes of traffic on top of our Main Street parking spaces. Who asked for that solution in search of a problem? Wouldn’t that extravagance be onerous and dangerous to pedestrians? That strikes me as a somewhat cockamamie and problematic idea that fails to solve larger prevailing issues of congestion. It’s not as if many cars travel east on Main to access 9D north. Secondly, as I have said since the study was announced, it fails to address potential expected massive vehicular and pedestrian congestion west of the railway relevant to a Dockside trailhead. I think the developer is ignoring this elephant in the room by design so as to obfuscate what an absolute wholesale congestion disaster that would create.
Like most residents of Cold Spring, we find the crowds during the weekends and holidays of summer and fall overwhelming. Fortunately, we can walk to town and don’t have to find parking.
Cold Spring is a spectacularly beautiful village with easy access by car, train and boat from one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. Rather than resenting visitors, should we not embrace them and share the natural beauty of our glacial valley? Cars are the major problem, not people.
Why not have Main Street and the waterfront be for pedestrians only on weekends from May 1 until Oct. 31. This would allow room for tourists and residents. A new parking lot on The Blvd and a functioning shuttle might also help. The Putnam County Legislature should consider giving Cold Spring its fair share of revenues to help fund this project.
We need the trail. My family went to Cold Spring via train from Beacon on Oct. 20. It was packed. People love it here. I’m so glad they are moving forward to accommodate the people. [via Instagram]
To clarify, the Fjord Trail Data Committee did not issue or develop the visitor projections report. Instead, our role was to review and give suggestions on the report prepared for HHFT by the ORCA consulting firm.
To report that the committee “calculated” or “determined” anything misrepresents our role, which was merely to review the data. I hope residents will read the full report and the independent consultant’s summary memo to understand the full range of projections up to 1 million annual visitors to the corridor.
Winward, the Nelsonville mayor, was a member of the data committee.
Well said, Mayor Winward.
If you are a first responder and you come across someone who’s bleeding profusely from a accident and has multiple injuries, you do not treat the other injuries first. You make a effort to stop the bleeding, assess and deal with the other injuries. Then you get them to a hospital to have doctors and specialists do the rest.
For years the village and town has been bleeding from overtourism. But all that’s getting done is planning for the future and opposing sides slinging mud at each other. Most of the ideas will take years to implement.
What we need is a solution to stop the bleeding now, not wait years to work it out. At this time we ask our leaders in government and all stakeholders to look at what can be done now. How much longer will we as residents have to put up with this deluge of people on weekends? How much is all this costing in taxpayer dollars? How much damage is being done to the mountain trails from overuse? How much longer as residents will we not even think about going into the village on weekends?
This letter is not to criticize anyone, but a wake-up call to think out of the box for what can be done now. Maybe it’s time to close the trails? Maybe put a permit system to limit number of visitors? We cannot continue on the path we are on. Mull things over and think about how we can get together and stop the bleeding now.
Tony Bardes Cold Spring
After more than a year of review and deliberation, the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail Visitation Data Committee celebrated the completion of its work at a gathering in Beacon on Oct. 29.
On behalf of HHFT staff and board, I’d like to thank the committee members for dedicating their time and insight to the review of data collected and the studies prepared by HHFT’s expert consultants. These volunteers were each appointed by their respective municipalities and represented their communities with vigor.
With the technical assistance of their chosen independent consultant, BFJ Planning, the committee members reviewed data, queried methodology and, in some cases, requested revisions to findings from HHFT’s consultants. In the end, the committee affirmed findings on current traffic and pedestrian counts and the projected increase in trail-bound visitation forecasted for 2033 with and without the infrastructure and improvements of the Fjord Trail. These memos and the related reports can be reviewed at qrco.de/hhft-vdc.
In their final majority consensus memo on visitation projections, the committee affirmed 268,700 as the mid-range projection for the annual number of new trail-bound visits to the area directly attributable to the Fjord Trail once it is completed in 2033. The committee also affirmed the projected number of annual total visits (including new visits) to the Fjord Trail at 637,000 in 2033.
The committee added a plus or minus 15 percent range to these numbers to ensure that Fjord Trail visitation management planning takes high and low potentialities into consideration as we continue to hone our visitation management toolkit and incorporate input from the community and project partners.
We are grateful to the Visitation Data Committee members for all their efforts and look forward to continued collaboration with project area community representatives.
Kacala is the executive director of the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, Inc.