Shoreline Greenway Trail

As a new resident of Branford, Connecticut, I was looking to get involved in local organizations. I met representatives from the Shoreline Greenway Trail (SGT) at Branford’s town festival in 2023. The Shoreline Greenway Trail is an ongoing project that aims to connect communities along Connecticut’s coast with a multi-use trail, creating a safe route for non-vehicular travel and recreation. The SGT was looking for volunteers, including a volunteer to work on a mapping project. A system of trails has developed around the SGT’s main route and what is called the Tabor area. Existing maps of this part of the SGT were outdated and did not include many of the newly-developed routes. As a GIS analyst by trade and someone with cartographic experience, it seemed I was just the person for the job, and I happily took on this project.

The first step in mapping the Tabor area was walking the trails. A GPS application was used to record the routes as they were walked. Three separate trips were required to capture all of the routes in the area. Once the routes were recorded, they were exported to KML and brought into Esri ArcGIS Pro to refine the data and create the maps.

Once opened in ArcGIS Pro, the routes were converted into feature classes and the Align Features editing tool was used to smooth out the line segments. Route segments were color coded to match existing trail blazes where present. New colors were assigned for unblazed trails.

New datasets were also created for some of the other layers featured in the map. Feature classes were created for the Trailheads, Points of Interest, Parking, and Handicap Parking layers, and points for these feature classes were placed manually. A feature class was also created for the Water Bodies layer, and heads-up digitizing was used to draw its polygon.

The other layers seen in the map were acquired from a few different data sources. Parcel data acquired from the Town of Branford was used to create the Town of Branford and Branford Land Trust Land polygon. DEM data acquired from the University of Connecticut was used to create a hillshade, producing the topographical effect seen in the map. A road layer acquired from the Connecticut Geodata Portal was used to highlight major roads in the area of the trail system. A modified version of Esri’s Light Gray Canvas edited in the Vector Tile Style Editor was used for the basemap. About 25 hours were spent working in ArcGIS Pro to produce the map.

After the completion of the map, the Shoreline Greenway Trail’s use of it was almost immediate. New trail blazes marked since the map has been produced have been colored to match those on the map. Hard copy printouts of the map have been used at the SGT’s public outreach events. There are plans to add it to the trail’s website, and there is even a possibility of it being used to produce a sign for the trailhead. Personally, I have found the project enjoyable and rewarding to work on, and I am pleased with the final product.