WINSLOW -- The vision is of an extensive trail system looping around the town's central school grounds that could be accessed from four separate neighborhoods.

School Business Manager Gary Smith said the trail would be about 4 miles long in its entirety with a main section that would feature a 10-foot-wide paved path coupled with a 2-foot-wide stone dust running strip.

Smith said the total cost of the project could come to as much as $500,000, but the hope is that a nearly $300,000 federal grant -- through the U.S. Department of Transportation's Safe Routes to School program -- will come through to cover most of that expense.

Word on that grant could come any day now, Smith said.

"The goal of this Safe Routes to School grant," he said, "is to provide for safer and I'll say healthier ways to get to school."

So far the Winslow school system has received $30,000 for the project from the Bureau of Parks and Lands' Recreational Trail Program, Smith said.

Smith said the plan is to build trails that will be long lasting. In keeping with this goal, he said land earmarked for trails will be excavated and then filled with 12 inches of gravel.

Most of the trail system probably will feature a stone dust surface. The exception is the primary path that would start at the high school parking lot, wrap around the Benton Avenue side of the track, extend past the softball field and end where it would connect to an access trail off Pinehurst Avenue.

Smith said that path would be the paved portion of the system.

He said the trail would also have access points from Chadwick Street and from the neighborhoods next to Winslow Junior High School and Winslow Elementary School.

Smith said the intent is to include extensive trail markings, so users know how far each section runs.

"We want to promote fitness," he said, "and if people want to run this trail, they will want to know if this loop or that loop is a half mile long."

Smith said trail markers also might include information on the ecology of the area. Benches, too, might be placed at certain sections to provide rest stops for those using the trails.

The idea, he said, is to create a system that everybody in the community can use.

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com