Railbanking is the act of preserving rail corridors for possible future use. Railbanking leaves the railroad, railbed, bridges or bridge corridor, and other infrastructure intact. This relieves the railroad's operator from the responsibility of maintenance, and from taxation. Existing rails may or may not be maintained intact on the railbed, depending on their condition or any planned interim use of the railbed. Often the rail corridor is put in custody of a state transportation agency, which then seeks a new operator for possible rehabilitation or reactivation. This helps ensure the possibility of future restored rail service when new economic conditions may warrant resuming operation.
In places with many environmental laws and other governmental regulations as the United States, it is very difficult to restore an abandoned line, but it is easier with a railbanked line than one that has undergone a "total abandonment", as the federal government guarantees the railroad the full rights to reactivate it. A railbanked line can be reopened within a year's time while an abandoned corridor could take years to be reactivated, if it was even possible. In railbanking, the government helps fund the line's rebuild. In the 25-year period from 1983 to 2008, 14,184 miles (22,827km) of railroad have been abandoned.[1] Of that, 8,056.5 miles (12,965.7km), representing 56.8% of the lines abandoned in the past 25 years, were originally negotiated for railbanking agreements.[1]
Twenty-one percent of those railbanking agreements failed; that is, they were ultimately abandoned. Of those 8,056.5 miles (12,965.7km) originally negotiated, 5,079 miles (8,174km) actually reached a railbanking agreement, representing 35.8% of the lines abandoned during the 25-year period.[1] The remaining 43.2% of the lines, representing 6,127.5 miles (9,861.3km), were lines that railroads never considered trying to have railbanked, and were abandoned in their entirety. In total, 9,105 miles (14,653km) of the 14,184 miles (22,827km) abandoned during the 25-year period were not railbanked (64.2%).[1] Some railroads refuse to railbank lines, and instead sell the land in parcels to the surrounding landowners.[1]
Since railbanking began in 1983, less than twenty railbanked corridors have been approved for reactivation by the Surface Transportation Board (STB). Some of these reactivated corridors had only short sections reactivated, while others had the entire corridor reactivated.[2] Railbanked corridors are usually utilized as multi-use recreational trails for cyclists, walkers, joggers, snowmobiling, cross country skiing, and horseback riding.[1][3][4][5][6]
The land over which railways pass may have many owners—private, rail operator, or governmental—and, depending on the terms under which it was originally acquired, the type of operating rights may also vary. Without railbanking, on closure, some parts of a railway's route might otherwise revert to the former owner. The owner could reuse them for any purpose, or modify the ground conditions, potentially prejudicing the line's future reuse if required. However, the landowner must agree to keep the infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels intact.
Approximately 85% of the railroad rights-of-way in the United States[7] were acquired by easement from the then-abutting property owners. Normally, when the use for an easement is abandoned, the easement is extinguished and the land is not burdened by this adverse use. In 1983, Congress passed what is now known as the federal Rails-To-Trails law codified as 16 U.S.C. 1247(d). The federal law took the property rights of property owners throughout the United States for rail trails. Several property owners sued the government as the law took property without compensation. In 1990, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the property owners were entitled to compensation for the land taken for these rail trails.[8] In 1996, the plaintiff was awarded $1.5 million as compensation for the land taken for a trail through his property (see Preseault v. U.S., 100 F3d 1525, Fed. Cir. [1996]).
The state of Connecticut has taken a proactive approach to preserving railway rights-of-way. Since the 1970s, Connecticut Department of Transportation policy has been to acquire abandoned rail lines for preservation. This has contributed to the majority of railroad mileage in Connecticut being publicly owned, between the state and Amtrak.[9] Today, this policy continues; the State will purchase any RoW that shows future potential for transportation, when the property becomes available.[10] CDOT has subsequently transferred 60 miles of RoW to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for use in rail trails, and CDEEP itself has independently obtained another 50 miles (22 of which are used for the Valley Railroad). A provision of this transfer is that CDOT is allowed to retake ownership of a right-of-way when needed for transportation purposes.[10] Because of this, Connecticut is one of the only states where railbanked corridors have a reasonable chance of reactivation (should there be a need to), where elsewhere local opposition from trail users and property abutters would be able to directly influence a municipally-owned right-of-way.
Often, most of or all infrastructure is removed regardless to future use. Laws have been passed to remove infrastructure, in some cases. For example, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a law was made to remove all unused railroad overpasses.[1] Another example is a natural disaster. If a flood washes away a railbanked railroad bridge, that is beyond the owner's control. The local, state, and Federal governments could give some financial help for the railroad to rebuild any infrastructure that may have been damaged or destroyed during the time that it was unused.[1]
A single section of a route changed in this way could have serious consequences for the viability of a restoration of a service, with the costs of repurchasing the land or right-of-way or of restoring the site to its former condition outweighing the economic benefit. Over the full length of a railway's route with many different owners, the reopening costs could be considerable. In 2017 the STB ruled that Neosho County in Kansas violated the Trails Act when it foreclosed on and sold three parcels of railbanked land where each spanned the full width of the right-of-way.[11] The county's sales of the parcels were preempted by federal law and were vacated to keep the rail line available for reactivation.[12]
By designating the route as railbanked, these complications are avoided and the costs of maintaining a right-of-way are removed from the railway operator. In the United States, land transferred to rail banks is held by local, state or federal governments and many railbanked rail corridors have been reused as trails.
In the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, thousands of miles (kilometers) of railway were closed under the Beeching Axe cuts in the 1960s and while several of these routes have subsequently been reopened, none were formally treated as land banks in the US manner. The Beeching closures were driven by the government's desire to reduce expenditure on railways, and so most lines were offered for sale to the highest bidder, a process which frequently led to great fragmentation in the ownership of former UK railway lines and reuse of the land for entirely different purposes. The Ryle Telescope on the former Oxford–Cambridge Varsity Line is possibly the most extreme example, but commercial and residential developments are common.
The Katy Trail State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Missouri that contains the Katy Trail, the country's longest continuous recreational rail trail. It runs 240 miles (390 km), largely along the northern bank of the Missouri River, in the right-of-way of the former Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. Open year-round from sunrise to sunset, it serves hikers, joggers, and cyclists. Its hard, flat surface is of "limestone pug".
The Minuteman Bikeway, also known as the Minuteman Commuter Bikeway, is a 10-mile (16-kilometre) paved multi-use rail trail located in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts. It runs from Bedford to Alewife station, at the northern end of the Red Line in Cambridge, passing through the towns of Lexington and Arlington along the way. Also along the route are several notable regional sites, including Alewife Brook Reservation, the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum, Spy Pond, "Arlington’s Great Meadows", the Battle Green in Lexington, and Hanscom Air Force Base.
The Florida Central Railroad Company is one of several short line railroads run by Regional Rail, LLC. It runs from downtown Orlando northwest to Apopka and Tavares with a branch from Toronto to Ocoee and Winter Garden and branches from Tavares to Umatilla and Sorrento. The Florida Central connects with the Central Florida Rail Corridor in downtown Orlando, Florida and has trackage rights on the CFRC from there south to Taft Yard where they interchange with CSX Transportation. The railroad is based out of the Plymouth freight station.
A rail trail is a shared-use path on railway right of way. Rail trails are typically constructed after a railway has been abandoned and the track has been removed but may also share the right of way with active railways, light rail, or streetcars, or with disused track. As shared-use paths, rail trails are primarily for non-motorized traffic including pedestrians, bicycles, horseback riders, skaters, and cross-country skiers, although snowmobiles and ATVs may be allowed. The characteristics of abandoned railways—gentle grades, well-engineered rights of way and structures, and passage through historical areas—lend themselves to rail trails and account for their popularity. Many rail trails are long-distance trails, while some shorter rail trails are known as greenways or linear parks.
Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) is an American nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that works with communities to preserve unused rail corridors by transforming them into rail trails within the United States. RTC's purpose is to create a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors.
The Atlanta BeltLine is a 22 miles (35 km) open and planned loop of multi-use trail and light rail transit system on a former railway corridor around the core of Atlanta, Georgia. The Atlanta BeltLine is designed to reconnect neighborhoods and communities historically divided and marginalized by infrastructure, improve transportation, add green space, promote redevelopment, create and preserve affordable housing, and showcase arts and culture. The project is in varying stages of development, with several mainline and spur trails complete and others in an unpaved, but hikeable, state. Since the passage of the More MARTA sales tax in 2016, construction of the light rail streetcar system is overseen by MARTA in close partnership with Atlanta BeltLine, Inc.
The Mass Central Rail Trail (MCRT) is a partially completed rail trail between Northampton, Massachusetts and Boston along the former right-of-way (ROW) of the Massachusetts Central Railroad. It currently has 59 miles (95 km) open, and 94.5 miles (152.1 km) are open or protected for trail development. When complete, it will be 104 miles (167 km) long through Central Massachusetts and Greater Boston, forming the longest rail trail in New England. Many sections of the trail, including the Norwottuck Branch of the Mass Central Rail Trail and the Somerville Community Path, have been developed as separate projects but serve as part of the complete Mass Central Rail Trail. The Norwottuck Network, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that supports the build and operation of the MCRT, maintains interactive maps of the MCRT and rail trails that connect with the MCRT, and other Massachusetts trails.
The Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail (TCB), the official name of the Northern Central Railroad (NCR) Trail, is a rail trail that runs along an abandoned railroad corridor where the Northern Central Railway once operated. The trail extends 19.7 miles from Ashland Road in Cockeysville, Maryland to the boundary with Pennsylvania. At the Pennsylvania line, the Torrey C. Brown Trail becomes the York County Heritage Rail Trail and continues to the city of York.
Air Line State Park Trail is a rail trail and linear state park located in Connecticut. The trail is divided into sections designated South, North a piece of the East Coast Greenway, and the Thompson addition. An additional 3.6-mile spur to Colchester is sometimes designated as part of the Air Line trail. At the Massachusetts state line, the trail connects to the Southern New England Trunkline Trail, a 22-mile-long trail to Franklin, MA built on the same right-of-way. Since 2018, the town of Portland, CT has also maintained a 2.3-mile portion of the Air Line trail, connecting to the southern end of the state park at the town line with East Hampton.
The Moosup Valley State Park Trail is a rail trail located on the railbed of a former New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad line in the New England towns of Plainfield and Sterling in Windham County, Connecticut. The line ran from 1898 until 1968. The rail line was abandoned in the late 1960s, and was designated by the state as a multi-use trail in 1987. The trail is owned and operated by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
The New Haven and Northampton Railroad was a railroad originally built alongside a canal between 1847 and 1850 in Connecticut. Leased by the New York and New Haven Railroad from 1849 to 1869, the railroad expanded northwards to Massachusetts and its second namesake city in 1859. Upon the end of the lease in 1869, the company expanded further into Massachusetts, reaching as far north as Shelburne and Turners Falls.
The Dakota Southern Railway is a railroad that until late May 2021 ran 189.7 miles (305.3 km) between Kadoka, South Dakota, and Mitchell, South Dakota, and which continues to service the approximately 10 miles (16 km) of remaining active track of the Napa Junction–Platte Line in southern South Dakota. It connects with the BNSF Railway in Mitchell and Napa Junction respectively.
Rails with trails (RWT) are a small subset of rail trails in which a railway right-of-way remains in use by trains yet also has a parallel recreational trail. Hundreds of kilometers of RWTs exist in Canada, Europe, the United States, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Farmington Canal Heritage Trail is an 81.2-mile (130.7 km) multi-use rail trail located in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
R.J. Corman Railroad/Pennsylvania Lines is a railroad in the R.J. Corman Railroad Group, operating a number of lines in central Pennsylvania. It primarily carries coal between mines and Norfolk Southern Railway connections at Cresson and Keating. The trackage was acquired from Conrail in 1996, when the latter company sold its "Clearfield Cluster"; Norfolk Southern acquired nearby Conrail lines in 1999. This is the longest R.J. Corman owned line, at over 300 miles in length.
An abandoned railroad is a railway line which is no longer used for that purpose. Such lines may be disused railways, closed railways, former railway lines, or derelict railway lines. Some have had all their track and sleepers removed, and others have material remaining from their former usage.
The Dawkins Line Rail Trail is an 18-mile (29.0 km) rail trail in Johnson and Magoffin Counties in Kentucky. The multi-use trail, suitable for biking, walking, and horseback riding, occupies an abandoned rail corridor that was constructed in the early 20th century for the Dawkins Lumber Company. It is the longest rail trail in Kentucky.
The Uinta Basin Rail project is a proposed 100-mile (160 km) rail line to connect the shale oil rich Uinta Basin region of eastern Utah to the national rail network. Numerous proposals have been made, some as far back as 1902, that are still under consideration. The current effort is a public-private partnership between a coalition of 7 counties in Utah, the Rio Grande Pacific Corporation and Drexel Hamilton Infrastructure Partners. The railroad is also backed by the Ute Tribe who hold a 5% stake in the project. If the rail line is built it will be the first major greenfield rail line built in the United States since the line to the Powder River Basin was built in the 1970s. The Surface Transportation Board approved construction of the line in December 2021, but in August 2023, a Federal Appeals Court halted the project pending "a more fulsome explanation for the Board’s conclusion that the Railway’s transportation benefits outweighed the project’s environmental impacts".
The Northeast Texas Trail (NETT) is a planned 130+-mile multi-use trail along the route, following alongside U.S. Highway 82 and Texas State Highway 34. When complete, the trail will connect 19 cities spread over seven counties, stretching from the edge of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex to the Texarkana metropolitan area along the Arkansas border.
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