Dryden Rail Trail Task Force makes headway despite pandemic

While the Dryden Rail Trail Task Force faced some challenges in 2020 due to the pandemic, Chair Bob Beck said the group still has plenty to be proud of from the past year, with much more work planned for 2021.

The Task Force currently oversees the development of the Rail Trail, which, when complete, will run from Dryden to Ithaca. Many sections have been completed in the Task Force’s five-year history — like from Dryden Lake to the village of Freeville — with remaining work centered around connecting those sections for a contiguous trail.

As Tompkins Weekly covered back in August 2020 (full article at https://t.ly/wEKo), the project received $1.5 million in funding from the New York State Department of Transportation’s Transportation Alternatives Program and over $700,000 in matching funds from five different town and grant sources, including state parks, county administration, state administration, Cornell University and the town of Dryden.

The Rail Trail Task Force was created in a town resolution in 2016, and as Beck explained, it was a long journey just to create the Task Force.

While Beck was the chair of the Dryden Conservation Board, he wrote an application to the Cornell student group Design Connect in 2014 for help with a possible Rail Trail before the Task Force was formed. It wasn’t until 2015, when he applied again, that a group of students and engineers agreed to help lead in the efforts.

“They, with their faculty advisers, put together a really nice plan to help us get started with this project, to do the project from Dryden village to Ithaca on the former rail bed,” he said. “So, that was a start. And a year later, the Town Board established the Rail Trail Task Force.”

The Rail Trail Task Force consists of 11 volunteer members mostly from other town committees or community groups, all of which Beck recruited after he was appointed chair of the Task Force upon its inception in 2016.

While the project faced considerable challenges in the beginning years due to a multitude of factors, many of the larger challenges have since been tackled. Beck explained that the biggest hurdle was trying to gain access to private property on which to build the trail, as much of the previous rail bed had been sold to private landowners in the 1980s.

Beck said that since the beginning, many landowners have been happy to donate their land to the Rail Trail project.

“We started reaching out in 2016 … to all the owners and asking if they would be willing to donate a permanent trail easement to the town, and wonderfully, most of them have,” he said. “Most of the owners like the idea of a trail because they know they would use it and their families and guests would use it, running next to the property or at the edge or even in some cases through their property.”

The other big challenge — finding safe passage across Route 13 — was solved thanks to a capital improvement grant from the county and contributions from Cornell, which helped fund research into a bridge to run over Route 13 to connect the Dryden portion of the trail to Ithaca.

Unfortunately, building the safe passage is another matter. The Task Force has hit a snag on this front after research showed the cost to build the bridge is higher than originally anticipated and outside of the group’s current budget. So, that work is currently on pause, Beck said, until the Task Force can find additional funding. This problem has created an overall delay in the project’s progress.

The pandemic has also led to some slowdowns for the Task Force, as Beck explained. While the group was able to move its monthly meetings to Zoom without much difficulty, it’s still been a challenge trying to get work done.

“We found that our Zoom meetings work pretty well,” he said. “In some ways, it’s almost like sitting across the table from each other. And we are able to get things done. It’s just a different feel to it. But, overall, it has definitely slowed things down.”

Due to the pandemic and other previous challenges, the project has taken much longer than the originally projected three years, but Task Force members remain committed to the work, Beck said. What has helped in their efforts is considerable support from community members, as Beck explained.

“Probably the biggest accomplishment is just getting so many private landowners on board,” he said. “Having landowners willing to donate easements to the town for the benefit of the community is huge. And so, we just want to repeatedly express our great appreciation for the landowners who have been a critical part of this process and donate easements.”

Beck also extended appreciation to Bruno Schickel, owner of Schickel Construction.

“He has contributed a huge amount in terms of actual donations of materials and time and recruiting other contractors with machines like bulldozers and Bobcats and excavators [that] were needed to do trail work,” Beck said.

Moving forward, Beck said the Task Force’s agenda for 2021 is mostly centered around trying to get the Route 13 bridge built and continuing to work with landowners, particularly in Freeville. Beck is optimistic about what 2021 holds for the group.

“It’s always hard to predict when you’re going to achieve another major breakthrough,” he said. “We’ve had lots, [and I’m] really feeling good about our success so far.”

And past 2021, Beck said his overall hope is to complete the trail so that residents all across Ithaca, Dryden and Freeville can enjoy it.

“I’m past retirement by quite a bit, but I have this dream of seeing the trail completed and being able to still get on a bicycle, ride all the way to the other end, and feel energetic enough to turn around and ride back again,” he said. “I’m looking forward to that time, that event, whenever that might be.”

For more information on the Dryden Rail Trail Task Force, visit its website at http://dryden.ny.us/board-commission-list/rail-trail-task-force.