Photo by Michael Weidner on Unsplash
Your comments are needed now to prevent rule changes that threaten railbanking—agreements between railroad companies and trail managers to convert unused rail corridors to trails, until they are needed for railroads again. Opponents of railbanking want to impede the development of rail-trails.
Please submit your comments by Thursday, November 1. Read on for details.
From Rails to Trails Conservancy’s Leeann Sinpatanasaskul:
“As you may know, the federal Surface Transportation Board is considering a rule that RTC believes poses a threat to railbanking and, therefore, the creation of future trails. Basically, the rule would limit railbanking negotiations to an arbitrary three years, when some negotiations take up to 6 years.
The comment period ends on Thursday, Nov. 1—and I just found out last Friday that anti-railbanking supporters (from NARPO – National Association of Reversionary Property Owners) are sending in many comments supporting the rule.
If your organization is able to send in their own comments opposing the rule, please do so! The docket number is EP-749-1 and comments are classified as “other submissions” which do not require a user account or a filing fee. RTC has a template letter attached that you can use, and I am more than happy to help review a draft if you have questions.
If you, as an individual, would like to send a comment, an easy way to do that is through our action alert. RTC is collecting petitions and we’ll submit them to the STB by the Nov. 1 deadline.
Sorry for the short notice and if you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me an email.”
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