The Woodstock Land Conservancy and the Catskill Mountain Railroad recently exchanged letters to the editor in the Kingston Wire showing two diametrically opposite viewpoints on the removal of the Basin Road trestle. Because facts do matter, here’s why WLC — the convening organization of the Friends of the Catskill Mountain Rail Trail coalition — wrote that CMRR’s plan to take trains across the Basin Road trestle puts the entire Ashokan Rail Trail in jeopardy. It sounds like hyperbole, but it is “just the facts.”
Public documents from 2017 provide those facts. The Ulster County Attorney wrote a letter to former Deputy Director of Planning Chris White, which was then shared with the county legislature, noting that the signed agreements between the county and New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) allow for either rail or trail from Milepost 10 to Milepost 21.6 — the area that includes the Basin Road trestle — but not both. The letter makes it explicitly clear that there can be no rail operations along the Ashokan Reservoir without terminating the Ashokan Trail Easement. The only way rail use will be allowed is if the trail easement — the agreement that allows the ART to exist — is terminated.
There’s another letter from former NYCDEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza to the tourist train company that includes this unambiguous statement: “To be clear, New York City will not permit the use of rail and trail simultaneously on any part of the easement that runs through the Ashokan Reservoir lands. This has been our position for more than a decade, and it remains our position now.” That was also written in 2017.
There’s been no public indication that NYCDEP has changed its longstanding position and any change would require revising the Ashokan Trail Easement, subject to approval by the NYC Council and the County Legislature. Thus, exactly what the WLC said in its letter to the editor remains the current situation: If rail is allowed on the Basin Road bridge or any other part of the Ashokan Reservoir land, the rail trail must go.
This is why the legislative resolution removing the Basin Road bridge and allowing the NYCDEP to replace it with an active transportation bridge at no cost to Ulster County taxpayers is such an important issue for all of us who care about the ART and want to see it extended to Kingston.
Read the letters for yourself here.
