LARA to acquire railroad bed

Amanda O'Rourke
The Daily Item

July 12, 2008 06:43 am

— LEWISBURG — Railroad tracks between Montandon and Mifflinburg will soon be coming up to make way for sneakers, bikes and skis.
The Lewisburg Area Recreation Authority has agreed to purchase the 11.8 miles of track and right-of-way owned by the West Shore Railroad stretching from Montandon through Lewisburg to Mifflinburg with the intention of converting it to a trail.
The announcement was made Friday morning during a press conference at the Brookpark Station Cafe.
The nearly 12 miles of track was purchased with the help of a $150,000 grant from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The full purchase price of the land was not disclosed.

Trey Casimir, LARA board chairman, said plans are to clear the rail bed of tracks and lumber by the winter and sell the scrap metal to help pay for the rest of the project.
With an estimate of $100,000 per mile, the anticipated project cost is about $1.2 million, Casimir said, and could go higher because of the inclusion of the railroad bridge over the Susquehanna River at the east end of Lewisburg.
He anticipated construction could begin as early at spring 2009.
The West Shore Railroad discontinued rail traffic on the line in 1997. It was in 2000, LARA executive director Angela Zimmerman said, that talks began to turn the land into a recreation trail.
Though those talks finally have come to fruition, Casimir said the rail bed could be thrown back into commission should the government decided rail traffic is needed.
“If the federal government decides it’s more appropriate for there to be a railroad here, if they decide that, for whatever reason, this need to resume being a railroad, then we will have preserved the rail bed for them,” Casimir said.
With the LARA project underway, it becomes the first Rails to Trails project in the Valley, though a small portion of the 3-mile Penns Creek Trail lies in Snyder County.
Across Pennsylvania, there are 93 open rail trails totalling 964 miles. Another 87.5 miles of rail trails are under construction with more than 600 miles of trails possible in the future.
Once open for use, the trail will be available for walkers, joggers, cyclists and cross-country skiers. Motorized vehicles, from motor bikes and all-terrain vehicles to cars, and prohibited.
Given the Amish and Mennonite population in the Valley, Zimmerman said buggy access also is being considered.
About 220 properties lie along the proposed trailway, and Casimir said LARA was heard feedback, both positive and negative, from them.
There are some people who are concerned about the typical concerns: loss of privacy, litter, vandalism,” Casimir said. “But we’ve also heard from people who are very excited and think it will be an asset to the community and also to their particular property.”
LARA will hold a public meeting to at 7 p.m. July 14 at the Union County Governmental Center to discuss the project.