Trails takeover

[Zoning Goddess]

I am on the trails team in a suburban county adjacent to Mickey Land (Orange County Florida). In order to improve THEIR quality of life, the powers that be are proposing (up for their voters to decide) a bunch of transportation improvements. One of those is "re-routing rail lines around the metro area." That means trying to convince the rail companies to re-take the abandoned lines we have acquired and developed as recreational trails. Any ideas to fight this? Comments? Their proposal to their voters doesn't even acknowlege that these ROW's have been abandoned and developed.

 

[JNL]

You would think there would at least be some recognition of the work that has been done! Their approach sounds very biased. What is the status of the consultation documents ie are they just draft at the moment?

 

[Rem]

Surely there are some transit benefits form the existing rail. Maybe you need to enlist some regular customers.

If all else fails, you subdivide your corridors into one foot square parcels and sell them individually to cycleway/trails supporters at a nominal price. Even a statutory resumption would bog them down for years. This has been suggested in the past down here for various conservation projects, however our planning controls prohibit it from happening. I think it may have been done on some Scottish highlands. Maybe gatherace knows.

 

[Trail Nazi]

ZG, please email me which idiots are proposing to do this. I would love to know. How stupid of Orange County!

 

[SlaveToTheGrind]

That would be a huge loss to lose the trails. Legally, if abandoned, would eminent domain then come into play?

 

[Jeff]

I doubt the rail corridors are "abandoned." Most of the trail organizations and rail companies I have worked with operate on a "loan" basis. Whereas, the rail line allows the "use" of the corridor for recreational purposes, but they still retain ownership in case they want to open the line up again.

Reason being, once you give up ownership of the rail right-of-way, it is NEVER coming back.

Good luck.

So now instead of walking to a downtwon train station, riders have to drive?