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Summary #3 - Ten Trails We Should Build Before We Worry about Converting Rails to Trails

1/22/2013

3 Comments

 
To see the introductory Blog Post to this series and the trail suggestions click HERE


I mentioned in my last post that as a result of these blog posts that Dick Beamish founding publisher of the Adirondack Explorer and founding member of ARTA (Adirondack Recreational Trail Advocates) asked me to lunch to discuss my writings and the rails-trails issue. I’ve known Dick since the mid 1970s and he was my first employer as a winter x-c country skiing guide when he started Adirondack Ski Tours in the winters of 1978-79 and 1979-80. 

I have tremendous respect for Dick. He’s been a great advocate for environmental causes and excellent entrepreneur. I also found him to be an excellent person to work for. We had a very cordial lunch and discussed many of the points I made in my blog posts about the rails-trails issue. In particular we discussed those comments I made about ARTA. Unfortunately neither of us had much luck influencing the other. The closest thing we came to agreement on was regarding the Unit Management Plan…at least in theory. I’m not against revisiting the Unit Management Plan process in theory. The original Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan called for UMPs to be updated every five years. So in theory a review of the Remsen-Lake Placid Travel Corridor UMP is long overdue. The reality is a bit different however. I’m not sure but I don’t believe that any of the UMPs have been updated. They were supposed to have been completed over thirty years ago and many have still not been completed.  Some haven’t even been started. So with that in mind here is my stand on revisiting the travel corridor UMP. When we complete all the Unit Management Plans we should then start updating the oldest ones first. When the time comes THEN the DEC and APA should do a thorough analysis of the issues surrounding the rails-trails issue. 

The fact that we can’t get Unit Management Plans written and implemented is emblematic of one of the biggest issues. Financial resources. Whether we turn the rails to trails, create all the trails I recommend, or implement my “50 in 2” concept we have a money problem. Even if the sunniest projections for turning the rails to trails turn out to be true, and I’m very skeptical that they will be, we still need money to maintain and provide support for continued trail development.  I’ll leave that discussion for my final summary entry on this topic.

3 Comments
Doug
1/22/2013 11:15:48 am

The Saranac Lake Wild Forest UMP is long overdue, let's hope that some of the trails you have proposed will make it in there. I hope the St. Germaine carry from Upper St. Regis to Lake Clear also makes the cut.

Reply
Phil Brown
1/22/2013 11:20:18 am

Jack, if we can't even afford to complete a UMP for the rail corridor, where are we going to find $43 million to rehab the tracks? Also, wouldn't DOT, not DEC, prepare the UMP since it is the agency that manages it? I don't know, but that would seem to make sense.

Reply
Steve Erman
1/22/2013 11:45:27 am

On the matter of the Corridor Management Plan, my thought is that the State will be much better off if it expends its limited planning resources on an implementation plan for the current Corridor Management Plan (CMP) than for a revision of that plan. One is a movement forward, the other is non-movement in-place. And, the implementation plan is an opportunity to bring all of the parties together in an effort to truly accommodate the mixed-use objectives of the current CMP. That implementation plan needs to extend beyond LP to Remsen and on to Utica, so that it includes the other portions of the Corridor beyond the Adirondack Park.

This is the "hard work" that to date all have avoided. The CMP stated a goal of mixed-use along the Corridor, but it did not determine specifically how one or more recreational trails can be incorporated along the route of the active railroad, within and adjacent to the corridor. If there is a genuine interest in accomodating all recreationists, including motorized vehicles like snowmobiles, which I hope there is, it will take a significant inter-agency effort in association with all stakeholders to figure out how to circumvent the narrow and otherwise challenging sections of the corridor and creatively use the unit management planning (UMP)process to define close-in trails in areas designated Wild Forest in the SLMP. Ultimately, “everyone needs to ‘make nice’ in the sandbox" and it is shortsighted and naive to think that the Governor's Office is going to exclude major user groups from the process.

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    Jack Drury 
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