Tracks in Dover, MA

MBTA approved the leases, but all is not lost.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/nee ... miles.html

While the lease is at no cost to the municipality, the MBTA reserves the right to enter into licenses or leases with utility and telecommunication companies to generate non-fare revenue.

The lease contains a reversion clause which allows the MBTA to take back the property at no cost, should it be needed for another transportation purpose.

It's not as good as a rails relaid without objections like the Minuteman, but it's something.

The EGE wrote:MBTA approved the leases, but all is not lost.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/nee ... miles.html

While the lease is at no cost to the municipality, the MBTA reserves the right to enter into licenses or leases with utility and telecommunication companies to generate non-fare revenue.

The lease contains a reversion clause which allows the MBTA to take back the property at no cost, should it be needed for another transportation purpose.

It's not as good as a rails relaid without objections like the Minuteman, but it's something.

No, not really. The standard rail trail lease agreement is a generic fill-out form. They all have that provision, and it's nearly meaningless it's so easy for NIMBY's to defeat. They can allow interim trails with the toothier railbanking agreement. That's what the 1981 legal settlement for Lexington Branch lawsuit puts in force for the Minuteman. CSX has trail-with-railbank in effect on the Milford Branch in Holliston because the town doesn't have money to purchase the line for its trail, and the state is showing curious disinterest. So CSX is charging them $300/month rent for the OOS bare trackbed and allowing them to pour a minimalist small-crushed stone surface on the trackbed and tidy up the landscaping for an operable trail while it retains its OOS designation. The T signs its life away because it doesn't give a crap, it doesn't want to maintain at all (which railbanking requires), and it can't backpeddle fast enough from transit expansion (which at least on the still-active Medfield-Millis end they badly wanted here). So they don't give a crap about protecting their rights and let the suburbs run roughshod over them.

I have no problem with a trail here. High ridership projections and all, I don't think Millis commuter rail trumps converting the Needham Line to rapid transit (Orange Line from Forest Hills to West Roxbury and Green Line from Newton to Needham Jct.). Eventually. That obviously isn't high on the priority pile and couldn't be considered until the agency is fully reformed by the Legislature. But Roslindale-West Roxbury is badly underserved by transit, and cresting NEC congestion makes Needham Line co-mingling an issue 2025 and beyond that's going to come to head. Needham has very congested roads and a very overstressed primary bus route. And Green Line would have to be built if Orange Line is going to sever the inner half, because Needham would probably win a lawsuit over transit loss (it threatened such in the 80's when the line was shuttered and looked like it wasn't coming back). I'm not that concerned about the Newton-Needham Heights trail because there's lots of hand-wringing in the communities about not salting that corridor over. Plus the freight spur and its trail is a largely redundant route over the river, so it's not like they'd be losing much by reverting the line back to rail. With MassHighway's 2-tracker rebuilt of the 128 bridge it's only the rickety old Charles River bridge that would require total replacement. I think that corridor's safe.

Needham-Dover I hate simply because it's the Iron Horse scam. The state is getting ripped off once again for the scrap, and they are going to do their typical cut-and-run hack job on the landscaping. Needham Bikes is the outfit running this trail lobby. They're not going to get a bicycle-grade path out of this if the s*** Danvers job Iron Horse did is any indication. That means the spoiled brats in Dover and Medfield are going to scream until they're blue for DCR to fix the trail. A trail DCR doesn't want. And a trail Needham Bikes seems to be setting them up to go AWOL on. For all of Tad Staley's and Christian Donner's public theatrics about being pure and virtuous do-gooders, they can't be arsed to register their organization with the Rails-to-Trails Conservatory or sign its code of ethics. Why is that? What are they hiding?

This is the scam. Iron Horse rips off for the scrap and leaves a mess behind, bootstrappy volunteer outfit that promises to maintain the trail goes AWOL, over-entitled local yokel town pols work the levers and goad the state into wasting resources on "Mommy, make it better or I will throw a tantrum" grounds, and a mockery gets made of the trail agreement where it becomes a modest taxpayer money sink. And the T doesn't give a crap, and will willingly throw DCR under the train to skirt its obligations. This is why MassDOT shouldn't even allow the T to own ROW's; everything non-rapid transit ought to be consolidated under EOT green color on the state rail map so the buck stops somewhere on making these decisions. Waste is waste. There doesn't HAVE to be a trail occupying the ROW so it has some use TODAY when the only option is standing limp while a scam gets pulled and the taxpayers incur waste. Either pick a trail route that serves some strategic purpose to DCR and do it right (they are involved in PLENTY of good ones that they are doing right), or side with preservation and railbanking. You can always re-dole out the trail lease and flip it to landbanking when there's a GOOD proposal on the table. This would be one of those corridors. They're not doing that. They're taking a knee and playing hear-no-evil/see-no-evil and letting themselves get taken again. Like they did in Danvers. Like they're doing in Lawrence-Methuen (another disaster and DCR maintenance sink in the making). This rope-a-dope game has to stop. It's borderline corruption.

TomNelligan wrote:

Weren't those tracks still seeing service until a few years ago?

Yes, and then the one remaining rail shipper went out of business.

June 16, 2006 was the last recorded revenue move to/from Newton Upper Falls:

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/B ... ssage/4249

JAJ

Ken, there was a run around near Medfield Junction on the east side of Rte. 27.

f-line who pays for fixing the north street crossing in medfield? it is 90degree tracks on a 45 degree road . it causes airborne flight of cars. if the road is 'smoothed', the trail will need steps to go over the road. and who pays for tie disposal? thanks. ken patrick

when did Bay Colony file for abandonment on teh Needham Branch??

KEN PATRICK wrote:f-line who pays for fixing the north street crossing in medfield? it is 90degree tracks on a 45 degree road . it causes airborne flight of cars. if the road is 'smoothed', the trail will need steps to go over the road. and who pays for tie disposal? thanks. ken patrick

Iron Horse Preservation takes all the rail, ties, and any other ROW hardware. They get their compensation in the scrap value of the hardware and recycle the good ties (usually to heritage RR's and nonprofits), then dispose of the rest. I don't think they do grade crossings over municipal roads, so the town probably has to fix those and pave it over.

When Iron Horse grades a "free" trail for nothing but the cost they recoup on the scrap the trail lobbies get what they pay for...a crap, barebones job rife with lingering problems. North St. probably will have an unsmoothed, jarring step from roadway to ROW that wrecks a few bike suspensions.

f-line- does iron horse have a positive all-in cost differential ?. my experience is that the cost of pulling the rail, connectors and spikes and disposing of the ties- usually no good for anything else- exceeded the scrap value. hence the plethora of old ties along the various row's. ties disposal costs are the killer. i would like to see all of this 'trail use' activity reflect the costs of tie disposal to be certain the ties aren't dumped in the adjoining woods. ( see pwrr and ridep) ken patrick

KEN PATRICK wrote:f-line- does iron horse have a positive all-in cost differential ?. my experience is that the cost of pulling the rail, connectors and spikes and disposing of the ties- usually no good for anything else- exceeded the scrap value. hence the plethora of old ties along the various row's. ties disposal costs are the killer. i would like to see all of this 'trail use' activity reflect the costs of tie disposal to be certain the ties aren't dumped in the adjoining woods. ( see pwrr and ridep) ken patrick

They're a nonprofit, mostly volunteer-run outfit. So there might be some filings online somewhere showing what their cash flow is. They restore some antique locomotives and RR equipment on the side to puff up their nonprofit stature, but basically they're a low-rent scrap dealer that breaks even on the scrap metal resale and redistribution of what serviceable ties they can salvage. I don't know what they do with the bad ties or what their disposal deal is for them, other than it all gets carted offsite and out-of-state from whence they came and as far as anyone knows they've never been cited for improper disposal.

I don't want to slag off on them too badly. They're frequently subcontracted on designed and state-supervised trails to handle the scrap and cleanup because they have the equipment and manpower for it. They do good work. And it's cheap for the gov't when they take most of their compensation in scrap proceeds, arguably lower-cost than paying a state crew or borrowing a freight RR to do the line/yard/etc. dismantling. They can be trusted to build a good trail when supervised to follow somebody's design, because usually there's a few extra bucks of compensation coming their way in extra labor using higher-grade materials (small crushed stone vs. re-spread ballast), fixing culverts, basic landscaping (benches, plantings), etc. i.e. The mundane stuff for doing the job right and making it last. They're working the Saugus Branch/Bike to The Sea right now, which is a DCR-designed job (potentially very, very good trail). And they did the Watertown Branch (1996-abandoned portion) cleanup 2 summers ago on that very nice DCR-built first trail leg...even salvaging the switch to the former Armory spur and making a little historical exhibit out of it. Whenever the state closes out purchase of the just-abandoned portion to Cambridge from Pan Am, they'll probably also do the (badly-needed) cleanup and brush-cutting before DCR moves in to do the landscaping.


It's the DIY jobs and associated sales pitch--"You get a perfect trail at NO COST but the scrap!!!"--that get scammy. 1) It's like feeding NIMBY's crack to permanently screw with state-owned ROW's. 2) There is no such thing as a "free" trail because you can't grade a functional one for the cost of the scrap resale, and they'll cut every corner to make sure they don't exceed cost. I mean, I don't know what the price ceiling is for scrap...you probably know way more about that than I. But it ain't high, and if the break-even math looks fuzzy here it's easy to see just how far IH has to cut corners on the labor to not lose their shirts doing this. 3) The state/town gets taken for a ride when it gets stuck with perpetual sunk cost maintaining the low-quality trail (often result of clogged culverts, washouts, divots, inadequate vegetation removal, and other safety hazards)...cost the "free" trail wasn't supposed to incur according to the happy-joy-joy sales pitch. And 4) the all-volunteer trail lobbies that bait their ill-informed town pols with the Iron Horse talking points are themselves too ill-informed to deal with the compromises incurred by a DIY job. They underestimate the maintenance hurdles, and then go AWOL when it's time for the all-volunteer "Friends o' The Trail" group to step up on its promises to community-maintain the "free" surface, pick up trash, clean out vegetation, and do other crud upkeep. Or, worse, they whine and scream about it to the pols until the town or state has to pick up a tab it never wanted. The freebies wouldn't be a bad deal if communities were responsible enough to educate themselves and understand the risks, didn't hijack these things to settle NIMBY or political scores, and were held as a condition of the lease to uphold their responsibilities. But they don't. And Iron Horse knows the rubes are always the first in line for its sales pitch, so it promotes it as some sort of cure-all when really this DIY method only works in a very limited, careful few cases. Massachusetts, New York, Penn., and other states in the region that don't keep their ROW usage under pretty tight, centralized lock-and-key are binge-drinking on the Iron Horse pitch right now. This is at least the 5th "freebie" doled out in MA since 2009.