[Talk-us] bike rail trail as built vs as proposed and imported

[Greg Troxel]

Alex Mauer <hawke at hawkesnest.net> writes:

> On 08/11/2009 06:10 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
>
>> But, is "abandoned" really in use in other countries to mean what in the
>> US we call "old railroad grade"?  (Here I am taking USGS norms to be
>> established practice in the US.)  
>
> Probably not; however, it is accepted practice in OSM.  As you say,
> someone with more familiarity with railroad procedures and how they
> differ between the US and elsewhere might be able to answer that.

I think one of the bugs in OSM is failure to follow established
practice.  But that's not worth worrying about in this case.

>> The Surface Transportation Board of the ICC makes abandonment decisions,
>> and they are published by the federal government.  An example:
>> 
>> http://regulations.vlex.com/vid/railroad-abandonment-lamoille-valley-22682301
>> 
>> I'm not saying this is trivial to find,
>
> I think that's a big understatement. I would go so far as to say that
> it's nearly impossible to take an arbitrary piece of railroad track and
> determine whether it's abandoned or out of service (in the US legal
> sense) -- or indeed, whether it's in fact still in service.

For tracks that are not abandoned, in service or out of service is
determined by the railroad.

> If my understanding is correct:
> * This several page document describes just one section of track.  So
> there are many, many of these documents.
> * This document just lists an intent to abandon a section of railroad.
> It may or may not have been accepted by the relevant authority (although
> it probably was)
>
> Can you provide an example of the steps one would have to go through to
> actually find this out for a specific piece of track?  As far as I can
> tell it would involve trawling through
> http://www.stb.dot.gov/decisions/readingroom.nsf/DailyReleases?OpenView
> or http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/advanced.html (the latter of which only
> goes back to 1995, and the former of which goes back to 1996)
>
> So you might be able to find out if it *is* abandoned (If you're really
> lucky it's on your other link at http://www.trainweather.com/aban.html)
> but even that's extremely difficult, and it's even less possible to
> determine that it's not abandoned.  It seems that the only way to do so
> is to go through every single abandonment notice, and if it's not on any
> of them, then it's probably not abandoned after 1995 -- though it would
> be easy to miss it among the huge number of documents.  And if it is on
> one of those abandonment notices, then you have to somehow figure out if
> the abandonment was approved.

Yes, it is hard to find out, but that does not make it unverifiable.  I
suspect one can write to the STB and ask and find out, although I
haven't tried.

You are applying an unreasonable standard.  Abandonment is an
established legal fact through government decisions and final notices
From the railroad.  This is no different than whether a street has been
accepted as a public way, and is easier than whether the public has a
right of access to a particular place (easements and adverse possesion),
or where property lines are.  If this distinction -- which those working
on rail trails are keenly aware of (usually entirely clear about a
particular section) -- is objectionable because it is hard to verify,
then we need to get rid of a lot of 'access=no' etc, and reconsider the
whole notion of showing park boundaries.  That's clearly not the right
thing to do.
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