•
Dave Lowin, Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy
•
Kirk Meyer, Green Schoolyard Network (Boston, MA)
•
Maryann O’Malley, People for Urban Progress (Indianapolis, IN)
•
Gregory Page, Saint Paul Riverfront Corporation
•
Keith Privett, Chicago Department of Transportation
•
Ellen Ryan, Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy
•
Dan Sentz, Pittsburgh Department of City Planning
•
Jim Sutherland, Eastern Market Corporation (Detroit, MI)
c. additional implementation research
While these corridors hold great potential for a green, connected network, rail companies are often focused on using and revitalizing their tracks. They are also concerned about the cost to remediate the land if extensive construction was required in providing public access. Converting underutilized or vacated rail lines into greenways that link disparate parts of the city will require proactive and sustained efforts on the part of city government. The Lehigh Avenue Viaduct is an example of an underutilized rail corridor that could serve to connect the Delaware River with neighborhoods underserved by green space. Largely inactive except for one train that serves one rail customer, the Lehigh Viaduct can accommodate both pedestrian and rail access on the portion east of Kensington Avenue. The standard for recent rail-trails around the country is that 30 feet of separation must be provided between rail and trail; at its thinnest point, the Lehigh Avenue viaduct provides a 100-foot-wide area of non-rail right-of-way. At its widest, it provides 500 feet. In comparison, Penn Park will be built 30 feet away from the nation’s highest-trafficked passenger-rail corridor along the Schuylkill River. Either leasing or vacating the Lehigh Avenue viaduct’s right-of-way would save the rail owner from maintenance and liability responsibilities, provide the railroad with compensation, and allow the city to manage public access.
Railroads: Opportunities
Railroads: Transformation
Because railroad rights-of-way form linear, cross-city connections with complicated ownership, utilizing them as ways to connect Philadelphians with their parks will require careful attention. Though they formed the transportation backbone of the 19th-century industrial city, many rail corridors today are underutilized or have been vacated as the city’s industrial base has diminished and new forms of transportation have supplanted rail use. These linear pathways would be significant additions to the green network; for example, converting the right-of-way from the Oxford, Frankford, and Bethlehem rail corridors to green (in three vacated stretches in Lower Northeast Philadelphia) would add 135 acres to the city’s park landscape.
The acquisition process for rail corridors is complicated. If the corridor is not yet legally abandoned, then the corridors can be acquired for public use through the Pennsylvania Rails to Trails Act of 1991.105 This act streamlines the acquisition steps through a process called railbanking. In the case of railbanking, the title remains with the rail company, so that company technically has the right to reclaim the corridor for freight rail, even though the government agency is paying the railroad for the right to use the land. Negotiation with the rail operator is still necessary, which can be time-consuming. In Atlanta, a legal abandonment process that began two years ago for 4.5-mile stretch of rail is still underway because Norfolk Southern wants first to
remove all the steel tracks and ties in order to sell them.106 However, railbanking expedites the process dramatically and should be considered for corridors in Philadelphia that have yet to be legally abandoned. Through railbanking, the city could negotiate for a particular corridor, or a citywide agreement could be reached with Conrail that would apply to multiple corridors. Once city representatives reach an agreement with the railroad company to go through the railbanking process, they must go through the discontinuation-of-service process with the Surface Transportation Board, the federal body that must review and approve any proposed change to rail infrastructure. In Philadelphia, there are likely to be cases in which the rail operator has already legally abandoned the corridor through the Surface Transportation Board. When Conrail went into bankruptcy in the early 1980s, they were given the authority to bypass the STB process and proceed to discontinuance. If the corridor has already been legally abandoned, then ownership generally reverts to adjacent landowners; if the corridor runs through a residential neighborhood, this could mean hundreds of landowners with extensions to their backyards. Most professionals contacted for this report agreed that trying to utilize a rail corridor after it has been legally abandoned is unrealistic. However, even if service was legally discontinued decades ago, rail companies might still hold a common-law easement. This would work to the city’s advantage, because the corridor is “abandoned in fact,” as service will clearly no longer run there, but not legally abandoned. The city’s most recent rail acquisition, the old Kensington and Tacony (K & T) line along the Delaware River, took place through what is known as a quickclaim deed. Conrail granted the property to the city without guaranteeing the validity of the title. This means that a property owner could dispute the deed. Such claims would have to be settled in court, but in the case of the K & T trail, the city had funding to do all the title research in advance.107 PPR currently has designs for the trail underway.
Green2015
131