On the long-running campaign to complete a New Haven to Northampton rail trail, advocates made progress this summer when the final long stretch in Southington was opened to riders, pedestrians, skateboarders and other users.

Running from Lazy Lane to Aircraft Road, the new 1.27-mile section leaves less than a mile to finish before the trail’s southern end reaches the Plainville line.

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        But from there, the next steps will be especially hard: Less than a mile north of Aircraft Road, abandoned and rusting railroad tracks give way to the southern end of the still-active Pan Am Railways freight line.

Trail builders started the New Haven-to-Suffield section of the trail in 1996, and have made gradual progress on a town-by-town – and sometimes block-by-block – basis. Their goal is to bring local residents out to ride or walk for health and well-being, draw customers to nearby restaurants and shops, and attract tourism.

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        For almost all of its 50 or so miles in Connecticut, the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail is built over a rail line that hadn’t been used in decades. Any remaining stretches of rusty tracks and rotting wooden ties were torn out, then a new base was put down and paved.

        The biggest appeal is that like rail trails across the country, the route is separated from streets and roads except for the occasional crossing. Users don’t have cars and trucks passing alongside them, and motorists aren’t slowed by lines of cyclists or pedestrians.

             But Plainville presents unique problems: An active railyard and an airport.

Robertson Airport’s runway is built over the railbed, so the trail can’t go close to the original rail route there. The northern half of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail abruptly ends at Northwest Drive and can’t continue due south: Instead, riders are routed along Northwest. But from there, they face a series of local roads and state highways that aren’t conducive to riding, so reaching the other end of the trail at Aircraft Road is a hilly, circuitous and hazardous trip.  Skirting the airport is only a small part of the problem though.

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       Pan Am, a subsidiary of national giant CSX, runs freight trains that connect with bigger shippers along routes in Waterbury and Berlin. Those lines meet at the Plainville railyard, where Pan Am maintains multiple tracks to store freight cars and locomotives.  And the biggest challenge is that Pan Am’s route includes a several-mile-long stretch to the south, which serves industrial customers in the lower end of Plainville.

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       With those tracks still in use and Pan Am unwilling to accept any rails-alongside-trails plan,  an alternate route must be designed alongside local and state roads.

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    Trail advocates face their biggest remaining challenge: Designing a safe, practical route along local streets that fills the roughly 5-mile gap in Plainville. Even the most optimistic trail supporters expect that will be two to five years away.

“They’ve divided it into three sections. The designs for the first two are approved,” said Barbara Collins, board president of the Farmington Valley Trails Council. “People are excited about it.”

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        Many Plainville residents were resistant a decade ago, but have become more interested after multiple public presentations by trails advocates and the state transportation department.

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        But construction isn’t imminent, and planners are still looking at alternative ways to provide a barrier between pedestrian lanes and traffic lanes. At the same time, final planning is being done on the Beeline Trail, which will run east from Plainville to New Britain. The location of that route will influence where the Plainville north-south section is put down.

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        For now, Collins said the new Southington extension has been well received. The trail had ended across Lazy Lane from Southington’s police station, but now continues north behind most of Queen Street’s commercial strip and ends a half-block in from Smashburger.  “We’re getting very good feedback. And it used to be a brownfield, so this also corrected a problem for the  environment,” Collins said.