What you should know
- Forgotten for 18 years, nearly nine miles of abandoned railroad tracks running from Hudson County to Essex County could eventually become a long greenway – similar to Manhattan’s renowned High Line elevated park.
- The Open Space Institute (or Open Space Institute as it is known in English) has gathered support from homeowners in both counties to build hiking and biking trails, as well as rain gardens and other plantings.
- Norfolk Southern Railway, which owns the property the lines are currently on, agreed to sell it for $ 65 million. Money still needs to be raised, both for the purchase and for the reconstruction of an elevated greenway.
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NEW JERSEY – Neglected for 18 years, nearly nine miles of abandoned railroad tracks running from Hudson County to Essex County could eventually become a long greenway – similar to the renowned High Line elevated park in Manhattan.
The Open Space Institute (or Open Space Institute as it is known in English) has gathered support from homeowners in both counties to build walking and biking trails, as well as rain gardens and other plantings that would span the entire city. length of space that could be used for recreation or possibly even scrolling. Norfolk Southern Railway, which owns the property the lines are currently on, agreed to sell it for $ 65 million.
Drone video provided by the institute shows how abandoned runways cut through urban communities and wooded areas. The proposed green space would include multiple cities and towns from Montclair to Jersey City, which could mean that each town’s section could end up looking different from the others.
“You have to work with the communities along the line to save what they want and how they want it to unfold,” said Dene Holfheinz of the Open Space Institute.
The rail bed, tracks on NJ Transit’s former Boonton Line that have been out of use since 2002, also cross the Meadowlands water body en route to Jersey City, promising the best access yet to an area that was once called a swamp and is now seen as vital to regional ecology.
However, there are some obstacles. On Mount Prospect Avenue in Newark, businesses adjacent to the space have taken over the tracks for their own purposes, such as parking vehicles. But the promise of what could be has thrilled defenders.
“It connects communities … there really is nothing like this in the region,” said Debra Lee of the New Jersey Coalition of Walks and Bikes. “When these options are available, people use them.”
Money still needs to be raised, both for the purchase and for the reconstruction of a greenway. It would take a combination of grant and government money to make the proposal a reality, with the purchase deadline within the next year or so.
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