A new concept for a trail from Woodstock to Kingston has revived a bitter age-old battle for the best use of the former rail corridor along Route 298 west to Belleayre.
The Woodstock Land Conservancy and Friends of the Catskill Mountain Rail Trail want to allow bicyclists and pedestrians to connect to the existing Ashokan rail-trail between West Hurley and Boiceville. The two organizations advocate a 6.25-mile trail connecting Kingston Plaza and the intersection of Basin Road and Route 28 as the best use for this portion of the 38.6-mile former Ulster & Delaware Railroad corridor purchased in 1979 by the county.
Right now, trail advocates are concerned with a 1.8-mile stretch of the corridor from Route 28A in Stony Hollow to Basin Road. A trail on that small stretch would run afoul of the tourist railroad’s plans to expand into the undesignated section and build a station at Basin Road.
The Ulster County Legislature voted last May to re-establish the Ulster & Delaware Corridor Advisory Committee, to be chaired by legislator Jeff Collins. The controversy attracted about 40 people to a recent committee meeting.
“Let’s see their plan”
Catskill Mountain Railroad (CMRR) president Ernie Hunt worries that trail advocates want to revert to a 2014 Ulster County Legislature resolution that called for the elimination of all rail operations in Kingston. A compromise the following year allowed for the train to operate between Kingston Plaza and Stony Hollow and for a trail to be developed between West Hurley and Boiceville.
The following year, in May 2016, CMRR settled a lawsuit against the county, agreeing to a rail with trail wherever feasible from Kingston Plaza to milepost 8.33, the current endpoint of the railroad in Stony Hollow. From that point to Basin Road was referred to as “the undesignated section.”
When the compromise resolution passed in 2015, “they were so angry that we were allowed to continue in Kingston and they’ve never gotten over it,” Hunt said as explanation of his opponents’ views. “And now they seem to see that there’s an opportunity to get rid of us completely, which is not what the committee is trying to do right now.”
Hunt said the trail supporters had yet to make a presentation to the committee.
“I think it’s important for them to state what their position is, what they advocate, and they haven’t done that. And it’s very frustrating to me,” Hunt said. “They just want to get it through, basically lobbying behind the scenes and the classic back-room deal. And I think they need to do the same thing we did. They have a plan. Let’s see it.”
Hunt argued that a train terminating at the rail-trail would be a benefit for everyone. With a car equipped to carry bicycles, people could ride the train to the trail and spend the day riding on the trail.
Hunt said the railroad could have the extension to Basin Road running within a year at a cost of around $250,000. “Ripping the whole railroad out to Kingston and replacing with a trail will cost the county $15 million,” he argued. “And it’s going to take years for this to happen. We can get up there in one year and get this thing going. All we need is somebody to say ‘go’ and we can do it within one year.”
CMRR reported 60,653 riders last year, with 85 percent of its ridership coming from outside Ulster County. Much of that ridership is concentrated at the end of the year on its much-touted Polar Express.
No room for both?
Woodstock Land Conservancy (WLC) executive director Andy Mossey said it was not the case that the trail advocates want the railroad to disappear.
“We have never advocated for the elimination of the railroad and will not advocate for
the elimination of the railroad,” he said.”We are currently advocating for the construction of a trail connection between the Ashokan rail-trail and the City of Kingston.”
A trail on the undesignated section would create opportunities for the trail to continue to
Kingston once the county decides how to proceed with the section being used by the railroad, he said. “It is possible that a trail could be put alongside the railroad in that area, but more work would need to be done to make sure that plan is reasonable.”
WLC board president Kevin Smith argued that a rail-with-trail option wasn’t feasible.
“Essentially it’s one use or the other,” Smith argued, “but it’s just too constrained to contain both uses side-by-side through most or a good deal of that undesignated section for reasons of cost, of technical feasibility, and potentially as well [of] the need to acquire additional rights of way.”
Hunt disagreed.
“Both their engineer and our engineer have said it’s feasible. The real issue is how much it’s going to cost. And that’s something we’re trying to get a handle on ourselves,” he said.
Smith called CMRR’s study “a three-week rush job” in response to an Open Space Institute feasibility study of different uses of the corridor. It wasn’t as simple as placing a trail next to active rails, he said. The corridor would need to meet the specifications of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO, which he termed “the gold standard” for multi-use trails.
“If you’re going with an AASHTO compliant facility,” Smith said, “and you’re looking at the feasibility, cost and technical ability to place an AASHTO-compliant trail facility immediately adjacent in the corridor, in the single-track corridor, to the railroad, to the tracks, you’re talking about a very different animal than if you’re running the trail up and over rock cuts or somewhere else away from the rail corridor.”
Part of the undesignated section runs next to a rock cut, so the trail would have to go up and over the rock or it would need to be blasted. Other sections were just too narrow for a train and trail, Smith argued. Many examples of trails alongside active rails are in areas that used to have two sets of tracks. One track is removed to make a trail, he explained. In this corridor, only one track exists.
Rail inside reservoir?
When the compromise had been brokered in 2015, CMRR had agreed not to interfere with the Ashokan rail-trail permits and construction in exchange for eligibility to bid on the eastern end of the corridor.
“And they took that deal,” Smith said. “And they pledged to uphold those commitments. And in my view, they just haven’t done that. So, it’s kind of rich for us to hear Ernie [Hunt] talking about us undermining policy.”
According to Smith, CMRR “tried to ram a resolution through the legislature in October or November 2023 to just flat out give them the undesignated section without any process whatsoever. No RFP, which is what they had just gone through to get their permit renewed on the eastern section.”
Smith found it “highly ironic” that the railroad company “has been pushing, pushing, pushing to get hold of the undesignated section and get to Basin Road … It’s not just Basin Road they want to get to. They want to get inside the reservoir property.”
He said CMRR wanted to put tracks back on the section now occupied by the Ashokan rail-trail. That’s New York City reservoir land.
“He wants to run trains up there on the dike. This strictly contravenes the policy. It would violate multiple agreements that Ulster County painstakingly negotiated with New York City DEP over several years. And to Ernie, they’re just things to be undone,” Smith said.
“If the county is working with a vendor on any kind of project, you want to have a good
partner on the other side of the table. And the railroad company’s documented actions, in our view, raise the question: Are they the kind of vendor that deserves to do business with Ulster County?”
CMRR’s five-year lease extension is up for renewal in December 2028. “We don’t agree the highest and best use of that corridor is a for-profit company,” Smith said.
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