“
More often than not, local govern-
ments that manage rails-with-trails
include them within their existing
umbrella policy for recreation facilities,”
she says. “Sometimes there is no addi-
tional cost. But in some instances, the
railroad has insisted the trail manager
increase or carry an additional policy.”
In the single fatality involving a trail
user on a rail-with-trail recorded during
research for
America’s Rails-with-Trails
,
both the railroad and the trail manager
were cleared of any liability because ample
safety measures had been applied. In mak-
ing its ruling in the case, the court found
that the trail, in Bellingham, Wash., had
in fact been effective in improving safety
for pedestrians and cyclists.
For people who regularly ride, walk,
jog or skate along rails-with-trails,
the safety issue seems to be barely a
thought. “I can’t really imagine why the
train would be a problem,” says Ann
Groninger. A personal injury lawyer
based in Charlotte, N.C., she regularly
rides the Charlotte Trolley Trail, a rail-
with-trail through her city’s downtown
that runs alongside a busy commuter
light rail line. “I take my 4-year-old son
on the trail. He’s learning how to ride a
bike. I don’t think anything of it.”
Groninger was surprised to hear that
concerns about safety continue to impede
rail-with-trail projects. “It’s the road that
presents my only safety concerns, not
the train,” she says. She adds that the
Charlotte Trolley Trail has had a trans-
formative effect on the city. “If you could
have seen what that corridor was like
before the trail and train—there was noth-
ing there,” she recalls. “Now, there are
10
new residential developments, micro-
breweries and lots of people using the trail
for getting around or just for exercise.”
More than a thousand miles to the west,
back in Denton, Texas, users of the Denton
Branch Rail Trail describe a similar experi-
ence. “When I rode next to the commuter
train, the experience as it passed was quite
charming and pleasing, if anything,” recalls
Howard Draper, one of the founders of
Denton’s now vibrant bike advocacy cul-
ture. “There’s a good-sized buffer, so I was
never scared to ride next to the train.”
Similar to the Trolley Trail in Charlotte,
the ability to co-locate multi-transportation
modes in one corridor has had an outsized
impact on the success of Denton’s develop-
ment. “I think accessibility to education
and employment opportunities made a
convincing argument to keep the trail
when they were planning reactivation of
the train line,” Draper says.
Access and Connections
This idea of accessibility and mobility
strikes at the core of the rail-with-trail
debate. Many argue that, because rail
corridors physically interrupt and divide
existing neighborhoods and communities,
disconnecting people from destinations
that might be nearby but on the other
side of the tracks, rail companies have
a responsibility to address the resultant
mobility problems for nearby residents.
“
Saying that ‘No, a trail has no place
around a rail corridor,’ is essentially a
value statement that the mobility needs of
the train passengers trump the mobility
needs of all those people who live nearby,”
says Tracy Hadden Loh, RTC’s director of
research. “And when you consider the fact
that oftentimes neighborhoods near train
tracks are lower-income communities, the
effort to build rails-with-trails to improve
local mobility and safety becomes an issue
of social justice.”
InWashington, D.C., creating safe
connections between neighborhoods on
both sides of a busy rail line was a prime
consideration in planning the Metropolitan
Branch Trail. The initial 1.5-mile section of
this urban trail-in-progress has seven access
points. “It was important to consider not
only the neighborhoods adjacent to the
trail, but also those across the active tracks,”
says Heather Deutsch, trail planner for the
District Department of Transportation
(
DDOT). To that end, DDOT is building
a $9-million pedestrian-bicycle bridge where
hundreds of pedestrians used to cross the
active tracks, putting themselves in danger.
The Lance Armstrong
Bikeway in Austin, Texas
Along the
Charlotte Trolley
Rail Trail in
North Carolina
Tracy Hadden Loh
Nancy Pierce
rails
to
trails
u
spring/summer.14
12