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Fast Facts
This June,we reached a hugemilestone
with our trail-fnder website,www.
TrailLink.com.We have now
mapped
more than 20,000miles of
trails
, and all of these great maps are
accessible to everyone online—for free—
to plan and enjoy rail-trail trips across the
country.
Hope for the Harsimus
Te
is a
six-block elevated corridor in Jersey City,
N.J. Built in the early 1900s, the block-
long segments of the embankment car-
ried seven rail lines 27 feet above street
level, connected by steel bridges between
each block. Te bridges were removed in
the mid-1990s, but today the city, the
Harsimus Embankment Preservation
Coalition, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy
(RTC) and other supporters are work-
ing to redevelop the line as an elevated
linear park.
In 2005, a development company
purchased the embankment site from
Conrail and stated its intention to
demolish the structure and build town-
houses along the corridor. Tis sale,
however, ignored long-established fed-
eral rail abandonment legislation that
afords signifcant opportunities to pro-
tect and preserve rail corridors for con-
tinued and future public use as a trans-
portation corridor—an efort to mitigate
the loss of the rail line as a public asset.
RTC was one of three groups, along
with Jersey City and the embankment
coalition, to challenge the legality of the
sale of the embankment to developers.
Lawyers for the developer responded
with a complex series of appeals and
motions, including a SLAPP (strategic
lawsuit against public participation) suit,
fled against RTC, RTC’s lawyers and
the other opponents of the sale.
In July 2011, the Superior Court of
New Jersey dismissed the SLAPP suit
and ruled in favor of RTC, the embank-
ment coalition and the city. While the
developers have appealed the decision,
the provisional dismissal of the SLAPP
suit has allowed RTC, Jersey City and
the coalition to continue their legal fght
to preserve the embankment.
For more information about the
legal proceedings, contact RTC General
Counsel Andrea Ferster at aferster@
railstotrails.org or 202.974.5142. To
learn more about the Harsimus Stem
Embankment, visit
www.embankment.
org
or call 201.659.4204.
RTC Highlights
n
On October 1,
RTC commemorated
its 25th anniversary with an award
reception in Washington, D.C.
As part
of the event, RTC invited the 25 hon-
orees of the Doppelt Family Rail-Trail
Champions Award. U.S. Secretary of
Transportation Ray LaHood delivered
the keynote address. Contact: Karl
Wirsing, karl@railstotrails.org.
n
RTC hosted its 9th Annual
Greenway Sojourn bicycle tour, July
19 to 24, in Pennsylvania’s north-
ern Laurel Highlands.
Nearly 250
Sojourners explored the region’s rail-trail
network, including the Ghost Town and
Hoodlebug trails, and helped blaze sev-
eral new routes, including the Cambria
and Indiana (C&I) Trail. Contact: Tom
Sexton, tom@railstotrails.org.
n
From October 2 to 5 in Fort Wayne,
Ind., RTC’s Rhonda Boose-Romano
and Eric Oberg participated in the
5th Mid-America Trails & Greenways
Conference.
Boose-Romano served on
the planning committee, and Oberg
moderated or presented during sev-
eral sessions.
Contact: Rhonda Boose-
Romano, rhonda@railstotrails.org.
n
In August,
RTC’s Western Regional
Ofce completed a report on exciting
new bicycle facilities, including cycle
tracks and bicycle boulevards, that
can help draw more people out on two
wheels.
Te report,
—
Innovative Facilities for Safer Bicycling
in California
, is available for download
at www.railstotrails.org. Contact: Steve
Schweigerdt, steve@railstotrails.org.
n
On June 15, the Surface
Transportation Board denied a petition
fled by GNP Railway, which sought to
reactivate rail service on the Redmond
Spur/Woodinville Subdivision, a
railbanked corridor in King County,
Wash. RTC fled comments address-
ing the policy implications of whether
a third-party railroad operator, which
has acquired no property or regulatory
rights from the abandoning carrier, can
reactivate rail service on a railbanked
corridor.
Te board’s decision autho-
rized the city of Redmond to remove
the track and ties over a two-mile seg-
ment of rail corridor through down-
town. Te city has since completed
the salvage project and plans to build
a trail on the railbanked right-of-way
in 2012.
Contact: Andrea Ferster, afer-
ster@railstotrails.org.
n
For a week in August, RTC’s Kelly
Pack and Lindsay Martin assisted with
the frst public meetings in the plan-
ning process for shaping the design of
the Laftte Corridor in New Orleans.
Since 2009, RTC has collaborated with
Friends of Laftte Corridor to raise
awareness about the project and
involve
local neighborhoods in the develop-
ment of the future 3.1-mile greenway.
Contact: Lindsay Martin, lindsay@
railstotrails.org.
n
On August 30,
Carl Knoch, man-
ager of trail development for RTC’s
Northeast Regional Ofce, presented
to more than 100 trail supporters
in Lake Placid, N.Y., about the eco-
nomic benefts of rail-trails
and also
in support of a proposed trail between
Lake Placid and Tupper Lake. Contact:
Carl Knoch, carl@railstotrails.org.
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rail-trail report
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