Bourne town leaders are waiting for word from the Healey administration on whether the state will allow railroad tracks to be removed for the proposed Bourne Rail Trail.
The Select Board and Friends of the Bourne Rail Trail want to build the trail directly on the rail bed — a plan called “rail to trail.” But the state Department of Transportation is studying an alternative that would involve building the Bourne Rail Trail next to the active tracks. That plan is called “rail with trail.”
At a public meeting Thursday at the Pocasset Village Association building, state transportation staff and consultants presented “rail with trail” options for Phase 2, which is the section that runs through Monument Beach to Pocasset.
The Bourne Rail Trail would connect the Shining Sea Bikeway in Falmouth to the Cape Cod Canal.
Some places along the tracks aren’t wide enough for a parallel trail, so if the tracks aren’t removed, the trail would have to go through at least one residential area. Where the trail would run parallel to the tracks, it would be separated from the tracks by a chain-link fence.
David McPherson, who chairs the Bourne advisory committee on the bike path, questioned how much longer the town can wait for Gov. Maura Healey to approve the removal of the railroad tracks.
“This proposal to remove the tracks has been before the governor’s office for a year and half,” he said. “Could there be action next week? Possibly. I don't know. But I think the question that the town has to confront is, ‘How long do we want to wait?’”
He said a trail next to the tracks would be vastly safer than what cyclists and pedestrians are dealing with now.
Select Board chair Mary Jane Mastrangelo spoke in favor of removing the tracks. She said the tracks could be relocated so they would be available for Joint Base Cape Cod to use in a future emergency.
“The military has said they are fine with relocating the track,” Mastrangelo said. “They just want a commitment from MassDOT that the track will be relocated so they can say, ‘Go ahead and … rip it up.’”
After the meeting, DOT engineer John Bechard said in an interview that whether the tracks are removed or not, the state needs to evaluate the alternatives.
“One of the items, when you need to assess the suitability, is we have to prove there's no other feasible alternative to removing the rail that could be implemented,” he said. “So that's why we were asked to [determine], is there an opportunity, because we don't know how long it would take to remove the rail.”
He said the meeting slides will be posted to the project website to collect additional comments, and then the Department of Transportation will get in touch with the town about its next steps.
