If you ride your bike in the Boston area, you encounter graffiti pretty much everywhere. It’s obnoxious and unsettling, because it leads to a sense that civic-minded people are on the losing end while vandals are able to gain the upper hand.
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The Somerville Community Path from Davis Square to East Cambridge is particularly bad, with graffiti overwhelming the walls alongside the MBTA tracks and next to the path itself.
Today, though, I’d like to take a look at a different bike path — the Tri-Community Greenway from Winchester through Woburn and into Stoneham, along with a spur from Winchester to Horn Pond in Woburn. It’s 13.4 miles out and back, and it’s marked with numerous well-designed signs along the way — many of which have been smeared with graffiti.
As a bike path, the Greenway is more aspirational than it is reality, since much of it follows neighborhood streets. That’s especially true of the southern part of the route up to where you turn east off Central Street in Woburn onto an actual paved path. After that, you’re on a path, though with numerous street crossings.
Earlier this week I rode the entire Greenway, including the Horn Pond spur, and took photos to document what I saw.
