On September 28, 2021, American Trails hosted a webinar, "Rails-With-Trails - Best Practices and Lessons Learned."  The session was aimed at trail enthusiasts, planners  and tail managers around the United States wanting to know more about this issue and what to expect when planning, designing and implementing rails-with-trails.

American Trails is a national, nonprofit organization working on behalf of all trail interests, including hiking, bicycling, mountain biking, horseback riding, water trails, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, trail motorcycling, ATVs, snowmobiling, and four-wheeling. American Trails members want to create and protect America's network of interconnected trails

A recorded playback of the ninety minute webinar can be found here.  

Thanks to American Trails for hosting this great event and allowing us to share the recording.

The US Department of Transportation recently released Rails-with-Trails: Best Practices and Lessons Learned,  a follow-up to its 2002 rails with trails report.  

The 2002 FHWA report was considered as a key resource for trail champions interested in developing rail-with-trail facilities.

Distribution of Rail-With-Trails Across the US

 USDOT

According to the new publication, there has been a significant growth of these facilities across the United States,

Some of the key findings of the report include:

• As of 2018, there were 343 identified rails-with-trails in the United States, totaling 917 miles  in 47 States.  In 2002, 30 states  had rail-with-trails.

• The majority of rails-with-trails (68 percent) are located along Class I, II, or III railroads. 

• Since 2000 there has been an increasing trend of building rails-with-trails along passenger rail and rail transit lines

Communities continue to look at active railroad corridors as safe, feasible corridors  to provide active transportation facilities for their citizens.

Are you interested in building a trail along an active railroad line but aren't sure where to start?  

The Rails to Trails Conservancy has created a new website with many resources to assist you in the process.

"As the nation’s chief rail safety regulator, nothing is more poignant to me than the simple fact that trespassing is the leading cause of all rail related deaths... Just last year, more than 500 people were killed and about 400 people were seriously injured as a result of trespassing.   And as a safety official, this statistic is especially sobering, because each one of those deaths and injuries were completely preventable." says Sarah Feinberg, Acting Federal Rail Administrator. "Generally, Americans just don’t equate railroad rights-of-way or rail bridges with life-threatening danger.  These lessons simply have not sunk into the consciousness of the American people.  The bottom line is that our Nation, starting with our children, must think of railroads and rail operations differently." 

Feinberg made these remarks at the opening of the March, 2015 Forum on Trains and Trespassing: Ending Tragic Encounters.

We couldn't agree more.  Yet the Federal Government spends $220 million per year to improve the safety of road crossings but nothing on the safety of the actual corridors where these tragedies occur.

Railroad corridors often divide communities.  They may be the shortest and most direct path for locals to get to school, jobs or other destinations.  

Simply putting up a sign, handing out a brochure at the local Walmart telling residents not to walk on the tracks isn't working as rising trespasser casualties demonstrate.

Making these corridors safer by offering multimodal accomodations and offering safe passage is a major step to reducing injuries and fatalities.

For more information on the Forum, click here.

Photo: News and Daily Advance, Autumn Parry

According to news reports,  21-year-old Massachusetts man died after being struck by an oncoming train in Lymchburg, Virginia.  Jonathan Gregoire of Wilbraham, Massachusetts was pronounced dead on the trestle, which spans the James River.  

Victoria Bridges, 21, of Newport News, VA also was on the trestle with Gregoire and suffered non-life threatening injuries. Bridges was transported by helicopter to Lynchburg General Hospital, according to police.

Robin Chapman, spokesman for Norfolk Southern, previously told the News & Advance sometimes people are on the tracks for either a shortcut home or a good overlook point. Freight trains do not keep regular schedules, they run day and night, anytime, he said.

Once again, we ask: if a separated, protected trail were there, would this needless tragedy have happened?

While biking the Great Allegheny Passage recently, a CSX freight train happened to pass by while riding In downtown McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

The trail is very close to the tracks, certainly less than five feet away, but I certainly didn't feel like I was in any danger.  

Report Concludes RWT's are Safe, Common, and Growing

The Rails to Trails Conservancy has released a new report designed to be a resource for planners, agencies and advocates on trails along active railroad corridors. 

The report is based on research which studied 88 rails-with-trails in 33 states, based on a survey of trail managers and the results of their ongoing study over the past 20 years. It  provides a collection of data, examples and practical tools to increase awareness of the rail-with-trail concept.

Key findings of the report include:

• There are 161 rails-with-trails in 41 states, a 260 percent increase since 2000. Rails-with-trails represent almost 10%  of the total number of rail-trails in America. Another 60 rail-with-trail projects across the country are currently in various stages of development.

• Constructing a trail along an active railroad multiplies the value a community derives from the rail corridor and provides citizens with transportation options.

• Out of the tens of thousands of fatalities on railroad corridors in recent decades, only one involved a trail user on a rail-with-trail. This suggests that a well-designed pathway provides a safe travel alternative and reduces the incentive to trespass or use the tracks as a shortcut. 
  
  
• Class I railroads continue to express formal opposition to the concept of trail development within or adjacent to their corridors. However, smaller private railroad companies and public rail authorities have reached agreements with trail managers on rail-with-trail development that have satisfactorily addressed any concerns about risk and liability.
  
  
• There is a growing trend of rail-with-trail development alongside local and regional transit corridors. Fifteen percent of the active rails-with-trails identified in the study are located adjacent to mass transit corridors.
  
  
• The vast majority of the rails-with-trails interviewed for the report are insured by an existing local umbrella policy, similar to most rail-trails and greenways.

The report is a timely update to prior rail-with-trail studies published in 1993, 1996 and 2000, and complements a report produced by the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) in 2002, Rails-with-Trails: Lessons Learned.

A copy of the 2013 report can be downloaded here.  Additional data and research behind the report may be found here.

An increase in pedestrian train accidents and fatalities in the Chicago area has prompted officials to discuss how to keep distracted pedestrians safe around trains.

The Northwestern University Transportation Center, along with the city of Lake Forest, Ill., sponsored a Pedestrian Rail Safety Symposium held on the University's Evanston campus.

To listen to Northwestern Transportation Professor Ian Savage discuss the symposium, click  here.

The goal of the symposium was to generate recommendations that will encourage change in pedestrian behavior and reduce the number of accidents. A recent spike in pedestrian train accidents and the increasing prevalence and speed of commuter trains and light rail vehicles, which often travel at ground level, are of particular concern.

With safe, separated facilities like rails-with-trails, the chances of pedestrians or cyclists being in jeopardy is greatly decreased.  

People are going to walk along these corridors.  Let's make it safe for them to do so.

Map Courtesy St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch began looking into railroad pedestrian deaths in June, shortly after a fatal collision in Kirkwood, MO. It examined hundreds of fatalities across the country.  The paper conducted more than 90 interviews, talking with victims’ families, railroad officials and workers, regulators, public officials and police, and reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, regulatory filings and industry publications.

Read the entire series at stltoday.com/rails

Rather than putting up more signs and looking the other way, if many of these deadly corridors were converted into safe-to-use, rails with trails, would the number of fatal incidents be loweredt?

Photo by Richard Masoner of Cyclelicious.  See more at Richard's Flickr.