MBTA policy change is good news for Tri-Comm. Bike Path
Published on August 9th, 2000
STONEHAM, MA. - At the end of a long and winding road of red tape lies the Tri-Community Bike Path.
This summer Secretary of Transportation Kevin Sullivan directed the MBTA to sell unfragmented railroad right-of-way property to local communities developing linear bike paths.
This change in policy, from selling off the property piecemeal to the highest bidder, will allow the wheels to begin turning again on the stalled project.
"The MBTA will not be allowing these corridors to become blocked," said Craig Della Penna, of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy of Washington, D.C.
Cameron Bain of Stoneham, Chairman of the Tri-Community Bike Path Com-mittee, has been working over the past five years to get the path built.
"As soon as we get authority from Mass Highway, we can start," Bain said this week.
He means start the design phase. It may take awhile to get a shovel in the ground, but at least the earth is moving.
The path as envisioned by the Bike Committee would stretch through Woburn, Stoneham and Winchester, running over abandoned railroad beds for most of the way.
A vote of the October 1995 Town Meeting sanctioned the Bike Committee and charged the group with "assisting the Selectmen and Town Administrator with developing the ...railroad right of way." Some of the railroad right-of way is town property.
In 1999 a memorandum of understanding was signed by the three towns. And since 1998 the Metropolitan Planning Council has approved more than $3 million for the project.
But, the MBTA owns the bulk of the abandoned railroad lines in the area. In 1999 MBTA officials decided to sell the railroad land to the highest bidder, which would result in a fragmented use of the property, making any kind of linear path impossible.
This unanticipated obstacle halted the local project. Mass Highway, the state department in charge of overseeing public road work, put the Tri-Community Bike Path on hold.
The MBTA bought the land in the 1980s from the Boston & Maine Railroad. The railroad was going bankrupt, and the MBTA got a federal mortgage to buy the land. The government later forgave the mortgage. Then in the late 1990s the MBTA real estate division was privatized.
After that the MBTA decided to sell the railroad right-of-way property, profiting at the expense of taxpayers who had funded the MBTA's purchase of the land.
But the efforts of activists like Bain and Della Penna convinced politicians to pressure the MBTA for fairness.
In minutes from a July meeting, MBTA spokesperson Mike Brennan assured the trailways folks that the policy of "selling to the highest bidder" was no more.
In a related matter, the Conservation Commission has to rule on the use of town railroad right-of-way property as an access road for Middle School parents during Central School construction. If the road is built, it may later become part of the bike path.
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