Dedham Heritage Rail Trail Timeline
• 1835 Dedham spur of Boston & Providence Railroad is opened
• 1967 last train runs
1999 Dedham obtains deed to the abandoned rail corridor from the MBTA
• 2002 Rail Corridor was capped by Dedham DPW and Mass Dept. of Environmental Protection as a “first step” in a “rails-to-trails” project
• 2009 Open Space Plan
• 2009 Dedham Master Plan endorses concept of the rail trail
- 2010 MassDOT hearing for Avery School building permit
- 2011-2012 Construction of Avery School
• 2013 Dedham/Westwood Bicycle & Pedestrian Network Plan
• 2013 May Town Meeting voted to appropriate $10,000 for the conceptual plan that was done by the Rails to Trails Conservancy
• 2014 (February) 1st Public Meeting
• 2014 Presentations to School Committee, MBCG & Park and Recreation
• 2014 (October) 2nd Public Meeting
• 2015 (February) 3rd Public Meeting
• 2015 (April) 4th Public Meeting/Abutters only
• 2016 (spring) Board of Selectmen voted to accept gifts (donations) that would fund the hiring of Weston & Sampson to create the Feasibility Study (see details below).
• 2016 (fall) Town hires Weston & Sampson to create a Feasibility Study
• 2016 Draft Feasibility Study released
• 2017 (January) Public comment period
• 2017 (June 13th) Final Feasibility Study Presentation at Dedham Middle School
• 2017 Feasibility Study completed
• Total = 15 public meetings and site walks on the proposed Dedham Heritage Rail Trail to date
• 2017 Director of Parks, Environmental Coordinator meet with School Superintendent, Kevin Coughlin, Susan Butler Walko (via phone) regarding rail trail
• October 2018 Town Planner, Environmental Coordinator meet with School Superintendent, Steve Bilafer and Mayanne Briggs in Superintendents office
• March 2018 Environmental Coordinator, Town Manager, Assistant Town Manager, Margaret Matthews (representing Friends of DHRT), School Superintendent, Mayanne Briggs, Steve Bilafer meet in Assistant Superintendent’s office to discuss warrant article 19 to be presented at May Town Meeting
• March 2018 Finance and Warrant Hearing
• April 2018 Finance and Warrant Hearing Deliberations
• May 2018 Town Meeting voted no on Warrant Article 19, which would have 1) funded a traffic circulation study for the Avery and adjacent schools, including a $50,000 grant from Mass DCR to study use of the rail corridor for biking/pedestrian use, and 2) would have funded a collaborator to assess, design and undertake a process to identify key stakeholders, including but not limited to abutters, and then to work with stakeholders to identify individual and community interests, concerns, and goals with respect to the process of studying the preferred reuse, if any, of the abandoned rail line referred to as the Dedham Heritage Rail Trail
- November 2018 - We uncover public records from the 2010 MassDOT 40-54A hearing, previously unknown to us, stipulating that the Avery School be sited and constructed to allow for construction of the rail trail and promote bicycle, pedestrian, and transit access and use.
| Essay by Dr. John Dashe. Friends of hte Dedham Heritage Trail
I’ve added the timeline below to give you some idea of what has been happening with the rail corridor over the years. We lost a battle at the May 2018 Town Meeting, which turned down article 19 as described below. This was not an up or down vote on building the rail trail, but rather a convoluted article to fund a traffic study around the schools (something the school committee was clamoring for) and fund a collaborator process for the rail trail to help placate the vocal opposition, which is mainly made up of abutters who are old-time Dedham townies.
Regarding the citing of the Avery School, here is the link to the Dedham Tax Assessor Map that includes the Avery School:
http://gis.dedham-ma.gov/taxmaps/largez/DedhamTaxMap_111.pdf
The school is the light orange structure that spans plots 111-64 and 11-65. You can see that it intrudes into the rail corridor (marked as “Recreation Road, plot 109-2 on the map). Using Google maps measuring tool, there is just barely 50 feet from the edge of the school to the edge of the football field at that point, so technically they have preserved the 50 foot accommodation required by the Letter of Commitment, though it clearly doesn’t comply with the spirit of the law.
I’m attaching a map we made of the proposed rail trail, and also a Boston Globe pro/con piece about the rail trail where I wrote the “yes” argument and a die-hard opponent took on the “no” argument. The final vote in the online Boston Globe poll was something like 500 to 45 in favor of the Rail Trail!
We are looking for some pro bono legal advice about how best to handle the information we recently uncovered about requirements that the Town of Dedham and its School Committee were supposed to do to allow construction of the Dedham Rail Trail (we call it the Dedham Heritage Rail Trail) as part of the permitting process for the Avery School back at the time it was designed and built (approximately the period from 2010 to 2012) and the ongoing efforts of some members of the School Committee to impede the development of the Rail Trail.
The main issue concerns the construction of the school adjacent to and on top of the abandoned rail corridor. The MBTA sold the corridor to Dedham in the late 1990s to be used for recreational and municipal purposes. In order to build the school, the Town and School Committee had to obtain permission from MassDOT per the Mass General Law, Chapter 40, Section 54A, which concerns permits for construction on railroad rights-of-way, and requires state consent to issue the building permit. This was done via a 40-54a hearing held in late 2010. In order to facilitate the building permit, which allowed construction to go ahead, the Town Manager and School Superintendent signed a Letter of Commitment pledging to keep the rail corridor open for a future shared use path. With this in place, MassDOT released a letter dated December 8, 2010, signed by Jeffrey B. Mullan, Secretary and CEO of MassDOT at the time, giving conditional consent to issue a building permit for the Avery School, based upon the applicants compliance with the following requirements:
1) The proposed building should be sited and constructed to allow the future construction of the Dedham Rail Trail.
2) The school be sited and constructed to optimize bicycling and walking access.
3) The building be sited and constructed in accordance with MassDOTs GreenDOT Policy, promoting bicycle, pedestrian, and transit use
Unfortunately, since that time, individual members of the School Committee have voiced opinions that the Letter of Commitment is not legal binding for several reasons (its not dated, and/or it was not endorsed by a vote of the School Committee, or Town Meeting, or the Board of Selectmen). We (Friends of the Dedham Heritage Rail Trail) and others had known of the existence of the Letter of Commitment for a long time, but until last week we had no knowledge of the MassDOT40-54A hearing or the letter from Mr. Mullen stipulating the requirements for the issuance of the building permit. I was able to obtain those records only after tracking down the date and file number of the hearing at MassDOT, which were not easy to find.
At this point, with the Town just having approved a traffic circulation study for the Avery School and adjacent Dedham High School and Middle School, we would like to see if we can use the MassDOT letter from Mr. Mullen as leverage to warn the School Committee that they must now (eight years later) start to comply with the requirements to optimize and promote bicycle and walking access and use, and in particular, permit construction of the Rail Trail.
There is more I could tell you about this but its late so I will send you more information tomorrow or Friday about the history of the Dedham rail corridor, including our efforts (stymied so far) to improve it by building a rail trail and linear park.
I’m attaching the relevant documents for your review, including the opinion of the Dedham Town Counsel regarding ownership of the rail corridor and the relevance of the Letter of Commitment to the deed.
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