Rails-to-Trails Programs

There are tens of thousands of miles of public recreational trails in the United States, with the number increasing annually. The wide variety of trail uses include remote hiking and camping, snowmobiling in northern forests, and bicycle commuting in the nation's dense metropolitan areas. Rich hierarchical networks of trails have emerged over the past five decades through federally facilitated public, private, and not-for-profit (NFP) collaborations. “Rails-to-trail”—the reuse and multiuse of abandoned railroad corridors—is an increasingly important, specialized component of this process.

Following World War II, the nation faced many challenges in its transformation to a peacetime economy. One of these was the escalating gap between the supply and demand for outdoor recreation. The gap was a result of the steep population growth during the baby boom, rapidly increasing mobility from auto ownership, the construction of the interstate highway system, reduction in the workweek, increased disposable income, and the accelerating open-space loss from suburban sprawl.

In 1958, Congress established the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC) to conduct a nationwide inventory and analysis of resources and opportunities, with trend forecasts for 1976 and 2000. In addition to federal land management agencies, all states participated. The ORRRC analysis was an innovative use of multidiscipline, quantitative social science. It legitimized outdoor recreation as an important topic in legislative and administrative decision making and a new field of academic study. ORRRC recommendations included the following: creating a systematic resource classification system for facility planning [Page 1139]and management; improving collaboration between federal, state, and local governments, with “citizens and private enterprise continuing to play the most important role;” and the need for innovative funding approaches.

In 1965, Congress passed the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act (LWCF). This legislation allowed a portion of the federal income from offshore oil and gas leasing to be used for statewide, comprehensive outdoor-recreation planning. Based on these plans and a state-established system for project prioritization, states could apply for 50 percent matching funds for state and local governments to acquire land rights, and undertake conservation-related restoration and development projects, including trails.

In 1966, the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR) released Trails for America, a nontechnical report advocating a comprehensive national-state-local program. This became the basis for the National Trail System Act of 1968 (NTSA), which authorized a National Trails System (NTS) with three categories: scenic, recreation (“reasonably accessible to urban areas”), and connecting and side trails. A fourth category, historic, was added in 1978. NTSA also encouraged states to include complementary statewide, regional, and local trails in their plans and applications for LWCF funding, thus, over time, generating integrated systems. Today, NTS trails exceed 50,000 miles.

Trail planners in this period looked closely at joint-use opportunities involving existing utility corridors, such as railroads, pipelines, and electric transmission lines. These presented major challenges because of their private corporate ownership, as well as associated safety and liability issues. Although utility corridors were growing, construction of the interstate highway system had significant negative economic impacts on the nation's railroads, as trucking rapidly captured freight market share.

Part of Atlanta, Georgia's, BeltLine Trail undergoes construction in 2012. This rail-based trail, which will eventually encircle the city, is part of a comprehensive greenway program that includes parks, transit, and neighborhood redevelopment.

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