Christian Donner kindly updated me yesterday in a lengthy call on the status of the Bay Colony Rail Trail:
- Newton has built its section, from Rte 9 to the Charles River
- Needham is proceeding with its section from the Dover line more than half way across town
- Dover is working through with a local citizen group what it will be doing
- Christian recently walked the Medfield section with Joe Hattum who runs Iron Horse Preservation, a nonprofit company that builds rail trails in exchange for the right to salvage the metal from the rails. The good news learned from Joe was that the Medfield section has mostly heavier gauge tracks, meaning there is more iron, meaning there is more salvage value, and meaning Joe says that Iron Horse can provide Medfield with a stone dust trail for no cost to the town at all, whereas other towns have had to pay something to get their rail trails.
- Christian reports that while Newton and Needham opted to pay the approximate $25,000 cost for the insurance against third party liability for those being injured by the environmental hazards along the rail trail, many more towns by far have opted to proceed without that insurance due the the exceedingly low risk that the towns would ever have to indemnify the MBTA under the contractual obligations that the MBTA requires towns to accept as part of the 99 year lease of the right of way. Christian and I agree that the Medfield section probably is unlikely to have been heavily polluted with hazardous wastes, and that it is highly unlikely that a rail trail user would ever be harmed by hazardous waste while using the Medfield section of the Bay Colony Rail Trail. Therefore, if Medfield decides to forgo the insurance, Medfield could have its own section of the Bay Colony Rail Trail without cost if a future town meeting opts to proceed.
