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  • High Line - New York City

  • General discussion related to Rail Trails nationwide, including proposed rail trail routes. The official site of the Rails-To-Trails Conservancy can be found here: www.railstotrails.org.
General discussion related to Rail Trails nationwide, including proposed rail trail routes. The official site of the Rails-To-Trails Conservancy can be found here: www.railstotrails.org.

Moderator: railtrailbiker

 #13264  by NIMBYkiller
 
I haved mixed emotions about this. I still feel the high line should be used to bring the 7 downtown(after Christopher St, it'd travel above the west side highway).

Now I'm thinking though that this may be the best alternative for the high line(a park with entrance to jets stadium), that is, if the stadium is built.
 #136818  by LCJ
 
Rusty Railroad Advances on Road to Pristine Park

By PAUL VITELLO
Published: June 15, 2005 -- New York Times

Plans for the city's first elevated park - a singular ribbon of green space stretching a mile and a half along an abandoned railroad viaduct 30 feet above the streets of Chelsea - have taken a major step forward with a favorable ruling by a federal transportation board.

The complete story (requires registration)

Image

 #136972  by F40
 
And if plans go under way, it will be only the second park like it in the world. France also built their elongated, elevated park on an abandoned rail line.

Can someone input a brief history of the High Line? (which lines were in service, purpose, dates, equipment, why abandoned, etc.)

And the article states the park will be on the 1.5 mile stretch on the ROW. Which segment of the High Line (if any) was this?
 #189270  by railtrailbiker
 
Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced last week that New York City has acquired the High Line, the derelict elevated rail line that runs between the Gansevoort Market and the Javits Convention Center, from CSX Transportation, the owner of the steel-and-concrete structure.


At the same time, the city and CSX signed a trail-use agreement that allows the 1.45-mile viaduct to be used for public recreation.


The title transfer and the trail-use agreement, concluded on Nov. 4, were the final legal steps necessary to transform the High Line, built 72 years ago and last used 25 years ago when it carried its final trainload of frozen turkeys, into a unique public promenade.
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_134 ... ookup.html
 #189673  by H.F.Malone
 
Are these people out of their minds??? WHAT freight? Have they looked at the West Side since, oh, say 1939?? They're going to interchange with...AMTRAK???? Something smells really fishy here. Some outfit/developer put these people up to this.

I don't much care for the rails-to-trails thing (for reasons I won't go into here), and would like to see the High Line used for a nice light rail route (maybe with repro vintage cars). But, since it looks like that won't happen, better to have it as a linear park, with at least some explanation of its history. A restored MDT reefer at a former meatpacker's siding might be a nice touch....
 #190499  by march hare
 
Geez, reading that petition from the 40 plus foundation, the only thing I see that sounds viable is their word processor. Could someone explain to me how they're going to make a viable, for profit shortline in a place with no existing traffic, and employ (THEIR ESTIMATE) 100 full time employees? Are they planning on using galley slaves to pull the freight cars instead of locomotives?

There hasn't been a viable shipper for decades, and the trend in NYC land use is strongly away from ANY form of industrial activity on Manhattan, least of all on that side of the island.

This sounds like a total smokescreen for some organization that opposes the (already underway) gentrification of that neighborhood.

I work on several environmental cleanup projects in that area, and I have to say I think preserving that as an elevated park is a magnificent idea--one of the smartest adaptive reuse proposals I've ever seen.

 #190532  by Otto Vondrak
 
Light rail or something like it would be a cute idea, but not very practical. Even as a novelty ride, you'd have to install all sorts of lifts and elevators to get disabled from street level to track level, and because this would be a new build, it would be subject to all sorts of regulations.

Freight is dead on the West Side. It's not coming back. The yards are gone, the facilities are gone.

I'm not sure I care about the park either way. I would have been sad if the elevated structure was completely removed... but since it's nowhere near what it was as a railroad, I guess preserving it as a park is ok. But they are going to remove the rails and make it something it never was... they'll probably remove all the natural vegetation currently in place anyway.

Short: There is no perfect solution that will make everyone happy.

-otto-

 #190542  by Sir Ray
 
I think well over a decade ago (don't feel like searching right now), there was a viable outfit planning to haul Waste (Construction Debris) - not sure if these guys are the successors or not. Anyway, that feel by the wayside, and I'm not really sure what these guys are gonna haul, 1000 unemployed New Yorkers put to work or not?

Anyway, I wonder about two things...
In the long ago past, why did Penn Central give up on the 60th Street yard
In the event, the 30th Street yard was taken over by the LIRR (1980s) long before Donald Trump came up with Riverside Place (Well, Television City or whatever they were calling it then - 1990s). From the looks of it, the 60th Street yard would have been a more viable location for a Manhattan freight rail yard (nowadays, mostly trailer and single stack intermodal and waste/debris construction materials, etc...).

OK, the current question is that I remember several building owners had blocked up the portion of the high-line which pasted through the buildings in question (one building I remember from the 1980s, perhaps an Artist's Co-op, had a mural of a full-size steam engine blazing down the inactive tracks). Now, I don't know if these buildings were on the portion of the High-line removed in the 1990s, but if not, will somebody soon have a linear park though their performance space or living area?