The Clipper City Rail Trail Was "Completed" in 2024. You Still Can't Ride It in a Circle.

Head out from the MBTA station on a Saturday morning, follow the pavement past Cashman Park and the Henry Graf Jr. Rink, cut along the Merrimack past the murals and the steel locomotive sculpture kids climb on, and for close to three miles the ride feels finished. Smooth asphalt, water views, a bench every few hundred feet. Then you reach the Route 1 rotary, and the trail simply stops. You're on the shoulder, dodging cars, until the pavement picks back up on the other side.

If you've lived in Newburyport for more than a season, you've hit this same wall, usually while towing a stroller or trying to keep a leash from tangling in rotary traffic. What's strange is that the City's own planning page for the Clipper City Rail Trail states that the final segments of the loop were finished in 2024. Scroll down that same page, though, and it lists the Route 1 rotary crossing as one of the sections still to be built. The contradiction isn't a typo. It's a sign that "complete" and "closed loop" are two different claims, and only one of them is true.

One trail, three different owners of the gap

The rail trail sits at 3.35 miles when the paved segments are added up, and that number is accurate. What it doesn't tell you is that the loop only closes if you're willing to walk your bike or step onto a live street for roughly half a mile near the southern end. That half mile isn't one problem. It's three, and each one belongs to a different institution with its own timeline.

• The Route 1 rotary crossing. MassDOT began a $17 million resurfacing and rotary reconstruction in the spring of 2023, a project the state projected would take about two and a half years, putting a realistic finish somewhere in late 2025. The rebuild includes a pedestrian-activated crossing meant to finally connect the Parker Street trailhead to the MBTA side of the loop. Whether that crossing is fully open as you read this depends on which part of the four-phase construction has wrapped, but as of the City's most recent update, it's still listed as unfinished.
• The fenced-off shoreline behind the wastewater treatment plant. A short stretch of the corridor along the Merrimack remains closed because the soil beneath it needs remediation before anyone can safely walk it. The City has been stacking grant applications, including a MassTrails request and Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness funding, to pay for cleanup and to build a stone revetment that will eventually carry the trail on top of it. Until that funding lands and construction happens, trail users get rerouted onto Water Street.
• The boardwalk bike ban. Even where pavement exists along the central waterfront, the Peter J. Matthews Boardwalk is controlled by the quasi-public Newburyport Waterfront Trust, not the City, and the Trust doesn't allow bicycles on it out of concern for pedestrian conflicts. Riders have to dismount and walk their bikes through that stretch, which functionally breaks the "ride the whole loop" promise even on days when every other section is open.

Three different reasons, three different decision-makers: a state transportation agency, the City's own environmental cleanup backlog, and a private waterfront trust's user policy. That's why no single ribbon-cutting has ever closed the gap. Fixing one piece doesn't touch the other two.

What already works, and it's most of it

None of this should scare anyone off the trail. The finished majority of the Clipper City Rail Trail is genuinely one of the better reasons to live in this city. Starting from the MBTA Newburyport Station, the corridor runs north through the High Street underpass, a stretch locals call the wooded, serene half mile precisely because it doesn't feel like you're still in a downtown of 18,000 people. It connects to the waterfront boardwalk, then loops past Cashman Park, a straightforward spot for a picnic table and a river view without paying for parking.

Along the way you pass the kind of businesses that make a walk into an errand: Haley's Ice Cream near the rink, Metzy's Cantina by the commuter rail platform for a plate before catching a train, Sea Level Oyster Bar if you time the walk for sunset over the water. The trail also runs close enough to the Custom House Maritime Museum and the Newburyport Art Association that a slow lap doubles as a museum crawl if you want it to. At the northern end, a spur called the Gillis Bridge Connector ties into the Old Eastern Marsh Trail, giving runners and cyclists a way to keep going into Salisbury without doubling back.

The southern end, built more recently through the South End neighborhood, ends at Parker Street near Oak Hill Cemetery. That's the point where confident road cyclists finish the loop on-street, and where everyone else turns around.

If you want an actual closed loop today, go a different direction

For anyone who wants a full circuit without waiting on state construction schedules, Newburyport has two other trail systems worth knowing, and neither shares the rail trail's gap problem.

Moseley Woods Park, a 16-acre riverside park at 14 Spofford Street, has a self-contained loop that runs just over a mile through wooded terrain overlooking the Merrimack, with a pavilion that hosts a summer concert series. It's small enough to walk on a lunch break and doesn't require crossing anything more hazardous than a parking lot.

For something longer, the Little River Trail System covers roughly 5.4 miles across land tied to the historic Common Pasture, a 700-acre expanse that's been used for grazing since 1635 and is now protected through a combination of city, state, and land trust ownership. The main trailhead sits at 95 Storey Avenue, with additional parking on Hale Street and Colby Farm Road. The paved Gloria Braunhardt Bike and Pedestrian Trail runs through part of the system, while the Marlene Schroeder Nature Trail and the Cooper North Pasture Preserve Trail branch off into rougher, unpaved terrain if you want to trade pavement for pasture views. None of it requires stepping into rotary traffic to finish.

What actually changes this

The rotary crossing is the one piece with a real state-funded timeline behind it, which means it's also the one most likely to close in the near term. The wastewater treatment plant segment depends on grant funding that hasn't been fully secured, so that gap could persist for a while longer. The boardwalk policy is a different kind of fix entirely, since it depends on the Waterfront Trust changing its own rules rather than on any construction budget.

For residents who use this trail as part of a daily routine, the practical takeaway isn't complicated: the loop is worth using for the three-plus miles that already work, and worth knowing where the seams are so a Saturday morning ride doesn't end with an unplanned dismount at a traffic circle. The City calling it finished doesn't make the rotary crossing any less real, and it doesn't make the detour through Water Street any shorter.

Newburyport's trail network, gaps and all, is one more reason this city rewards the people who already live here and know its texture. If you're weighing a move within Newburyport, thinking about what a property near the Common Pasture or the waterfront actually offers day to day, or just want a conversation with someone who tracks these details because the neighborhood is the job, Jamie Frontiero is a good person to call. Let's Connect.