There’s new hope for a significant CT greenway. It comes after decades of complex debate. 

A push to convert a desolate, 4-mile stretch of rail line into a Connecticut greenway with trails for pedestrians and bicyclists has run headlong into the state’s stance that the rails remain a viable freight transportation corridor.

But a new study shows for the first time that it is possible to combine the two uses in Hartford.

A draft of a new study by the Capitol Region Council of Governments, a regional planning agency, is breaking new ground in the decades-old debate over the...