|
|
| Significant part of former LIRR Wading River Branch to become rail trail (768794) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Significant part of former LIRR Wading River Branch to become rail trail |
|
|
Posted by trainsarefun on Sat Apr 11 10:57:20 2009 NYT story here.excerpt: April 12, 2009 Agreement Moves Rails-to-Trails Project Forward By JOHN RATHER A BICYCLING, running and walking trail on a former railroad bed has cleared one big hurdle and moved closer to construction after years of delay, government and utility officials said. The 12-mile, rolled gravel-topped trail would be the longest trail on a converted rail bed on Long Island. It would be built by Suffolk County, with federal financing, along a former Long Island Rail Road branch line that operated from 1895 to 1938 between Port Jefferson Station and Wading River. Numerous local roads cross the former rail line and provide easy access to the trail, which would be a springboard to miles of other hiking and biking trails. The rails-to-trails project would connect by road in Rocky Point to a 14-mile mountain bike loop trail on the 5,200-acre Rocky Point state preserve, which is in the core of the 100,000-acre Long Island Pine Barrens preserve. That state land is also the trailhead for more than 100 miles of hiking trails of the Paumanok Path that run, with limited interruption in Southampton, all the way to Montauk Point. If all goes well, the trail could be open to the public within two years, officials said. The Long Island Power Authority owns the corridor for the rails-to-trails project and has three transmission lines there — two 138-kilovolt lines and one 69-kilovolt line. Now, in an agreement with the county, the authority has consented to share the property with the proposed trail. Under the agreement, the county would assume liability for injuries on and off the trail from dawn to dusk and for injuries on the trail at all times, authority and government officials said. In exchange, LIPA would allow public access. The county would plan and build the trail and maintain it with help from volunteers. The wheelchair-accessible trail by design would be too gravelly for inline skates or skateboards, which often figure in injury cases. A total of $2 million in federal money has already been set aside for the trail, but more would be needed for it to go the full distance. How much is unclear, but officials said the trail would cost at least several million dollars more than $2 million. While LIPA and the county say they have no plans to help pay for the trail, Representative Timothy H. Bishop, a Democrat from Southampton, is trying to secure part of $11.5 million in federal money set aside more than a decade ago for East End scenic bikeways. His office said only $1.5 million had been used. The railroad stopped service on the branch line for lack of passengers and crews later tore up the tracks. But the broad right-of-way remains. It passes through or near residential areas in Port Jefferson Station, Mount Sinai, Miller Place, Sound Beach, Rocky Point, Shoreham and Wading River on a route just north and roughly parallel to Route 25A on Suffolk County’s North Shore. The trail would pass a historic 16-acre site in Shoreham where the inventor Nikola Tesla experimented with wireless electricity from 1902 to about 1915. The laboratory, which is still standing, was designed by the Gilded Age architect Stanford White and paid for by the financier J. P. Morgan. At Woodville Landing Road in Shoreham, the trail would go over a surviving stone railroad bridge. In Wading River, it would end near an inn where Theodore Roosevelt, a railroad buff, is believed to have stayed. The inn is now a restaurant and sports bar. .... The trail’s western entrance would be a short ride from the Port Jefferson Station terminal on the L.I.R.R.’s Port Jefferson line, which runs to Pennsylvania Station. .... Long Island’s only current biking and hiking trail on former railroad tracks is 1.5 miles of asphalt the Town of Smithtown opened in 2003. It runs along a former rail spur on state land at the former Kings Park Psychiatric Center from near the Kings Park train station to Nissequogue River State Park. Farther east, a former four-mile rail link between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor is now a hiking trail also used by motor vehicles. Rails and ties were removed, and the former rail bed is unimproved. A handful of other abandoned rights-of-way are scattered throughout the L.I.R.R. rail system. Two popular asphalt bikeways in Nassau County, the 4.5-mile Jones Beach Bikeway and the 7.6-mile Bethpage Bikeway, are listed by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. But, as the conservancy points out, neither one is along a former rail line. Ed Dumas, a LIPA spokesman, said the authority was open to discussing hiking and biking trails along other portions of its more than 100 miles of transmission line corridors.... |
|
|
|