The Shocking Untold History of the Rails to Trails Movement (Peter Harnik) - 10:6:25, 3.51 PM: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

The Shocking Untold History of the Rails to Trails Movement (Peter Harnik) - 10:6:25, 3.51 PM

Kea Wilson25min

Kea Wilson

00:00

Kea. Hey everyone, it's Kea. Welcome to the break. So if you've ever taken a stroll on New York's High Line or ridden your bike along Missouri's Katy Trail, you might have assumed that these amazing public spaces we call rail trails were always dedicated to people outside cars, or at least if you know that railroad cars once ran along these corridors, you might assume that it was a no brainer for communities to rip up the old abandoned train tracks and build a sanctuary for other kinds of human movement. But actually, the story of how American communities built their network of rail Trails is just as dramatic and epic as the tale of, I don't know, Jane Jacobs defeating Robert Moses's quest to build a highway through Lower Manhattan. And the story, by the way, isn't done being told. On October 15, pbs.org and member stations near you will air a new documentary called from Rails to Trails, which the filmmakers say quote captures the 60 year struggle and transformative triumph of one of America's most unlikely, grassroots movements. It's a star studded affair, featuring a narrator that you might recognize Academy Award nominee, Edward Norton, and cameos from folks like former Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. But what I appreciated most about it honestly were the interviews with Peter Harnick, who literally wrote the book on this history and helped shape its future by CO founding the Rails to Trails Conservancy and pushing forward legislation to make more rail trails possible. Legislation, by the way, that has not been without controversy and some pretty intense legal battles. Unfortunately, this documentary could not have come out at a more relevant time, as the Trump administration just made some shocking 11th Hour clawbacks to rail trail funding all across America and is still working hard to distort the narrative and reframe rail trails as a waste of taxpayer resources, rather than the essential infrastructure that they are. So whether you're a rail trail Die Hard or a skeptic who's really wondering whether these trails should be turned back into railroads, they do get into that, I really encourage you to check this film out, at least after you listen to this interview with author activist and now executive film producer of from Rails to Trails. Peter Harnick, enjoy, how about we just kind of start big picture? Why don't you tell me a little bit about the genesis of this documentary and why the Rails to Trails story is finally being told on film.

Speaker 1

02:59

So I co founded Rails to Trails Conservancy back in 1986 we opened our doors in 1986 It grew out of my interest in both in bicycling and in finding car free spaces and places. I grew up in New York City, and I rode my bike there. But of course, that's challenging and difficult and not as pleasant as it could be when Mayor Lindsay, Mayor John Lindsay, closed Central Park to cars back in the 60s, that was a real revelation to all of us, what life could be like without cars in a park type situation. And so I've sort of spent the rest of my life looking for situations like that, including closing parks to cars. But then, when, when I learned about Rails to Trails, which is an idea that, you know, I grew up on the east coast, but the Rails to Trails idea really started in the Midwest, and it kind of filtered its way to the two coasts. When I heard about it and learned about it, I thought, wow, these are these beautiful quarters that cars have never invaded in the first place. And maybe it'll be a little bit easier for us to save them as car free spaces for everything that you know, bicycling, walking, skating, skiing, pushing a wheelchair, rollerblading, everything you want to do, everything that the streets used to be like before cars pushed everybody aside. So I got involved with a lot of enthusiasm. And many, many, many other people got involved with a lot of enthusiasm all over the country. So I worked there for about 10 years, and then I did other things. I worked on city park issues and with other organizations. And then after I retired, I wanted to basically write a book about the history of Rails to Trails going all the way back to the railroads, and why there were so many railroad corridors and why so many of them were abandoned, and how some of them have been saved and many of them have been lost forever. People that know me as a trail person and come up to me frequently and say. Oh, I just love our trail. I've been on it all the time. I had no idea that it was a railroad at one point. So that was kind of an eye opener to me that so many people are using trails without knowing where they came from. And the other thing that people say to me frequently is, I just love our trail. Why don't you put them in everywhere? And I go, well, where would you put them? How would you find space for a trail? Where do you think this thing came from? So, you know, when I wrote the book and we started thinking about a movie, we had to really go back to the to the early days and say, Where did these corridors come from? How were they saved? What kind of value do they bring to America back then and today? So you know, many, many younger people these days really have no idea how central and powerful and important the railroad industry was to the country. So many people who have seen the movie say to me, Wow, I had no idea about the railroad. It's a wonderful double lesson in current day recreation and historical transportation, and then, of course, hopefully transportation for the future.

Kea Wilson

06:09

Yeah, that comes through very clearly. And you can count me as one of the younger people that at least didn't understand how contested the disused railroad space was. You know, I live in Missouri. I ride the Katy Trail every summer, at least sections of it, and I had no idea that there was such a dramatic history of litigation and emotion around these old corridors that have been turned into these incredible treasures. I consider them for my community. I'm curious if you have any thoughts like, what is it about an old railway corridor that makes people so emotional. Why do so many entities want to lay claim to these spaces that have been, in some cases, lying fallow for many years? Why is it such a charged part of our environment, even maybe more so than the street realm and the fights that we have over putting a bike lane in a driving lane or something like that?

Speaker 1

07:02

Well, okay, that's a multi faceted question with with layers and layers. From the perspective of bicyclists, which are, in many cases, the driving force behind saving a corridor and turning into trail, many bicyclists feel like their backs are to the wall if they discover a corridor and see how beautiful it is. Whether it's an urban corridor that really solves a lot of transportation and congestion problems, or a beautiful rural corridor that takes them through the countryside into nature and things like that, they don't save this. They really have no place left. They're still stuck with the streets and the high speed cars and being scared to let their kids come with them or ride by themselves, or or older people being scared to try and weave their way along a narrow side path, along a road, and things like that. So many of them throw themselves in with tremendous emotion and commitment to saving the corridor from the flip side, depending on where you are, if you're in a rural, agricultural area, there's very often strong feelings that there's been family lore going back, you know, a couple of generations. You know, our grandfather, our great grandfather, gave this land to the railroad, or sold the land to the railroad, or had the land taken away from him by the railroad, and we've always known that if the railroad ever stops running, we're going to get it back. Emotions can run pretty high on both sides. In urban and suburban areas, this land, which in a rural area might be considered almost worthless, actually has quite a bit of economic value, whether for parking lots or for building a building, or for evening out of property or something like that. You know, it can get into the Hundreds 1000s of dollars per square foot because it, you know, in some cases, one of the few places it's not built up in a built up area. So, yeah, the emotions can run pretty high from trying to save wonderful places to be in to trying to redevelop and make economic use of them.

Kea Wilson

09:11

They certainly can. And it seems like all of those stakes got increased pretty substantially with the advent of something you talk about in the documentary called rail banking. And there's some interesting celebrity cameos that crop up as the filmmakers tell the story of rail banking. Namely, Ronald Reagan and Bernie Sanders appear within a couple of minutes of each other. If you could tell me a little bit about what rail banking is, for those who haven't seen the documentary yet, because it has as of this recording has yet to be released, and maybe if you want to tell us a little bit about that story in Vermont, just as an object lesson, because it was a really fascinating story,

Speaker 1

09:47

okay, well, to back up, you have to understand the legalities, which are complicated and for many people kind of boring, but the legalities behind railroad corridors are that. They were assembled in many different ways. The railroads bought some land they had the right of condemnation so that they could just take it, and in some cases, they, you know, paid for it when they took it. In other cases, they talked a landowner into giving it to them or letting them have it for as long as they're going to be running a railroad. It's a morass of different legalities. And actually, even the legalities changed over time, because different states and different periods of time had different rules about what condemnation and things meant. So my co founder, David Burwell, who unfortunately isn't alive anymore, but who was a lawyer. You know, he used to describe it as a rare recorder is like a tied up bundle of twigs. And if you untie the bundle of twigs, they all fall on the ground. And that's really a nice way of thinking about it. When they're tied up, you have a continuous quarter that looks as strong as steel, but as soon as you get to abandonment, which is a legal process where the government has to say, yes, you have the right to abandon it, and it is now abandoned, then suddenly, that bundle of twig falls apart and then to reassemble a trail out of all that is quite complicated or maybe impossible, because each landowner has their own decision making process about what can happen. Some are some are pro trail and will sell it or donate it. Others are anti trail and put up No Trespassing signs and barbed wire. And others are saying, well, you know, I'm willing to negotiate with you. Let's see what we can do. So you end up with a very discontinuous trail which which which we do have in different parts of the country. There's a group in Massachusetts right now that's trying to reassemble 100 mile long corridor that was broken into dozens of pieces. And so it's just town by town. So in 1983 Congress passed an amendment to the trail system act saying that if a railroad agrees that a track might possibly be usable for re establishment of railroad service in the future, and if a local community agrees to operate it as a trail, then it won't be officially abandoned, and this bundle of twigs situation doesn't come into play, it'll still be held together as a continuous rail banked corridor, a corridor held for future railroad use and being used as a trail in the interim. So from a legal standpoint, that was tremendously important. And many, many trails came into existence because of that. Some of the opponents said, Oh, this is just a fraud. This is a fraud. They're just saying this. It's never going to really happen. But actually, some some rail recorders have come back in one form or another. A few of them have come back just the way they were abandoned because a million reasons. Let's say coal was discovered someplace, or some other mineable material was discovered, and suddenly, suddenly, somebody says, Well, it's actually be economically worthwhile for us to reestablish a train along here to mine the coal or something like that. In other cases, the local transit authority or regional train authorities might say, hey, you know this abandoned quarter would make a good line for extending our subway system or our commuter rail system. So it's not the original railroad that comes back in and re establishes services, but it's sort of another railroad, you know, either up a transit line or a different railroad. So there are definitely examples of tracks being put back into into use. And from a from a transportation standpoint, you know, we strongly feel that this railroad system, which was at one time, you know, much larger than the interstate highway system, it was 254,000 miles at its height, is a super valuable resource for the nation, and should be preserved for whatever we need. It for not just trails, but for underground cables and sewer systems and fiber optics lines and military defense and everything. So the rail Banking Law was controversial, and it was challenged legally and and the legal challenges worked their way up through various courts, and finally went up to the Supreme Court. And the case that got to the Supreme Court was a case in Burlington, Vermont, which was handled by a whole bunch of people, but one of the players who shows up in the documentary is Howard Dean, who later on became Governor of Vermont, but at the time was a local activist, and this is that's how he started his political career, working on a rail trail. He and other people tried to save this trail, and one of the adjacent landowners filed suit and said, No, this, this, this rail banking idea is is fraudulent and shouldn't be allowed, and this. Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional for railroads to save the corridor for the future, or for towns and counties and states to save the quarters for the future. The adjacent landowner might get paid for losing his access to the corridor. Is right to the corridor, but it can still stay in in public ownership. So this particular Trail, which is shown in the film, we show a lot of trails in the film, but this is, this is a really memorable one, because not only does it go through Burlington, Vermont, but then it curves out into Lake Champlain, way out into on a causeway, a rock cause, a beautiful rock causeway going right out into the lake. So it's a tremendously special recreational experience,

Kea Wilson

15:45

definitely. And it is fun to hear how, you know, then Mayor sanders opinion about the trail evolved over the course of his political career, you know, especially, yeah,

Speaker 1

15:55

yeah. So at the time, Bernie Sanders was a young mayor of Burlington. And, you know, like so many other railroad corridors, it was kind of junky. It looked like hell, and it had a lot of industrial uses alongside of it. And it happened to go through a pretty desirable area along the lakefront. And this is so typical of so many other cities, Chicago and Cleveland and St Louis and all kinds of other places that the railroad area kind of looks pretty bad and seems like it might be really badly polluted and everything, but actually, if you clean it all up, it's in a very prime location, usually along some kind of waterfront. And there's a lot of debate in the city of Burlington about what to do with the waterfront. And Sanders was involved with some different people who had different ideas, and so there was a little tussle about, you know, whether it would be developed for housing or developed for a park, and that's where there's that fun scene in the movie where Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders were on the opposite sides of the debate.

Kea Wilson

16:57

I just urge everyone to watch the documentary, to hear Howard Dean's impression of Bernie Sanders. It's very funny. And there's lots of really lovely moments in the documentary that just show like the human drama of what it takes to get these corridors developed, and how many characters there are involved in that process. And it's pretty fascinating. And yeah, and I will say also it is very relevant to today. These are not just historical characters. These trail battles are ongoing to this moment. And to just step a little tiny bit outside of the frame of the documentary right now, you know, when you're talking about the attempt to build rails alongside river friends, I'm thinking of places like the Naugatuck River Valley, which I recently wrote about them actually losing a pretty substantial federal grant to complete the Naugatuck River Trail the Trump administration, as I'm sure you know, as I'm sure many people listening to this now have made trails in the last month or so a major target of rescissions. Certainly, a lot of those rescissions are going to be challenged in court, but we are at a moment where not just the idea of trails, but particularly federal funding for trails, is under great threat. I'm curious how you hope this documentary will hit in today's political landscape. How do you want people to connect the dots between the history that is presented in this film and the present reality of how trails are regarded politically right now.

Speaker 1

18:24

Well, funny, you should ask, because in yesterday's Washington Post, there was a full page op ed by Howard Dean and Tommy Thompson, former Republican governor of Wisconsin, both of them well known for their strong feelings about, you know, what you might call blue and red, and they jointly wrote this editorial together, saying, there's a lot of things we don't agree on, but we do agree on rail trails and Tommy Thompson, his father's farm was divided by This railroad track between Elroy and Sparta in western Wisconsin, and the Elroy Sparta Trail became the, what we consider to be the first rail trail in the country. That was the first successful rail trail that was created by the state of Wisconsin. And so here you have these two very disparate leaders. Final line of of the article is, you know, trails aren't blue or red, they're green, and there's something that we can all unify around together. So that, to me, is tremendously hopeful and helpful, that all kinds of people of different political persuasions can can unify around saving corridors for recreation, health and transportation. And the interesting thing is, in in what you might call red areas, basically rural areas, you know, where many, many rail trails already exist. They're they're basically economic development tools in a small town with with a very small economy, if you can show that your trail is a design. Desirable thing for city people and suburban people to come out and use and everything from buying ice cream alongside of it to stay at a, b and b overnight, it becomes a pretty significant economic development tool for an area that might be voting very, very much on the red side of the spectrum, and then in urban areas where, to be honest, you know, a rail trail is not going to have that much of an economic impact in a place like Philadelphia or Chicago, it's a tiny little blip in a huge economy, but they can make a big difference in transportation and in reducing The amount of congestion and air pollution and everything else that the cars bring to the situation. So in Washington, DC, with the capital Crescent trail, we now know that about 1000 people a day are bike commuting rather than driving to work. So it works for both sides of the political spectrum.

Kea Wilson

21:00

It certainly does. And you know, one other benefits of trails that the documentary ends on, and I think I would love us to end on, too, that is just the social benefits of trails, how trails bring us together as people, and how the immediacy of a transportation experience without a metal cage around you, where people of all ages can come together is really powerful, despite all of these challenges politically and getting them built, the legal complexity of getting them built once they're in, as you mentioned earlier, people tend to say, I can't believe this hasn't always been here, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts about that, what do You want people to leave this conversation knowing about the social benefits of trails and how they impact people's lives?

Speaker 1

21:46

Well, definitely everything you said is exactly on target. Back in the day before cars, streets were social places in the mid 20s, around 1923, 24 it was kind of like the transition point where the street finally became a purposeful through way, rather than a social place. And one thing that I kind of love, it's an ironic thing. So New York, New York City was very, very late to getting to the getting into the rails, to trails movement. There weren't that many abandoned rail lines. And for whatever reason, it was very late. But then when they finally got into the rails the trails movement, they got in with the High Line, you know, which is, which is, sort of the most famous rail trail in the in the country or the world. It gets about 7 million users a year. So the High Line, which is an elevated, abandoned railroad that they try to tear down for years and years and years, and finally decided that, you know, it was too expensive to tear down, let's, let's do something with it. So the rules of the High Line are no bikes and no roller blades and basically no running either. It's a strolling place and it's a super social place, and of course, it's got an extremely high level of horticultural design so that it's really fun and beautiful to walk along and look at the plants and the trees and things like that. As I say in the film, the High Line is the only rail trail in the country that you would consider getting dressed up for nobody would get dressed up for their local rail trail, but people get dressed up to walk on the High Line. Maybe we'll see more and more of that around the country as well.

Kea Wilson

23:25

Well, it's exciting to think about a future of rail trails that could include everything from more high lines to more Katy trails in Missouri. So thank you so much for sparking our imagination that way. Peter, this has been really great. Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything I haven't asked you about this documentary that you think it's really important for future viewers to know, for folks to know. I will certainly include where to watch it and how to engage with it. But last call, well, I

Speaker 1

23:51

guess last call, from a sort of an action standpoint, is, you know, I hope that everybody who sees this film, you know, it's going to be a combination of trail lovers and couch potatoes and and everybody you know, everybody in between. And I just hope that everybody that sees this film will keep their eyes open for abandoned railroad tracks in their neighborhood, in their town, county, state, there are still abandoned railroad tracks that nobody has envisioned as as a wonderful place for a trail. This is a grassroots movement. It's it's always been a grassroots movement and new young people, old people, everybody in between, finds corridors and gets motivated to do something about them. Can create new trails.

Kea Wilson

24:41

Okay, that's our show. Thank you so much. Again, to my amazing guest, Peter Harnick, you can find a link to where you will soon be able to view from Rails to Trails. Again, that's dropping on pbs.org on October 15, or your local PBS station. It really was a fascinating documentary that. I hope you check out. If you think this show was fascinating, and you hope other folks check it out. You can do that by letting them know about this show. Tell them to give it a listen, or leaving us a positive review on Apple podcast, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. Or you can help us make the show by making a tax deductible contribution to our parent company, streets blog USA. You can find that at USA dot streets blog.org The break is a production of streets blog USA. Our theme music is eggshells by Christina Johnson. I'm your host and editor, Kea Wilson, and before I let you go, same question as always, what is one thing you have done today to help end car dependency. Let me know you.

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