County Legislator Jeff Collins pulled a resolution to remove and replace a railroad bridge over Basin Road after the tourist railroad railed against the measure in a recent advertising blitz.
Collins, who chairs the legislature’s housing and transportation committee, pulled the measure after legislators questioned the project in response to the Catskill Mountain Railroad’s full-page ads in area publications, including Hudson Valley One.
He plans to reintroduce the resolution in February.
The New York City DEP has advocated the bridge’s removal to provide large trucks access to the reservoir for a major construction project. Without removing the bridge, trucks will have to take a combined 750,000-mile detour during the length of the project. Collins has said that once the DEP project is complete, the bridge will be replaced with a span compatible with bicycle and pedestrian traffic to connect to the Ashokan Rail Trail.
CMRR has slammed the bridge replacement as a backdoor way to stall the railroad’s intention to expand into the 1.8-mile undesignated corridor. That stretch, from Stony Hollow to Basin Road, is the subject of a study to determine whether a rail-only, rail-with-trail or trail-only option is the most viable.
The Woodstock Land Conservancy, long at odds with CMRR because of its trail-only advocacy, expressed its disappointment with the decision to pull the resolution.
“By aggressively opposing Resolution 451, CMRR has shown its true intention: to undo the progress of the past decade and expand into reservoir property, destroying the beloved Ashokan Rail Trail,” WLC Communication and Outreach Manager Keisha Hoerner said.
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