Changing Railroad Ties : Greenbelt advocates try to put rights of way to public use. They call land part of America’s ‘recreational frontier.’

Railroads don’t go as many places as they once did, but railroad holdings and rights of way still cut through our back yards, downtowns and meadows. Roughly 100,000 miles of abandoned strips of land that used to be lined with railroad ties are part of what greenbelt advocates call America’s “recreational frontier.”

Many of these rights of way are tiny sections and remnants of the rail system that time and altered transportation needs have orphaned. Each year, 3,000 miles of these rights of way are being lost to public use.

They may not be desirable for mass transportation, but these corridors can still serve as viable transportation and recreation routes, trail advocates say. Take Esplanade Park, a narrow, 1.3-mile long greenbelt along Esplanade Avenue in north Tustin. The park, which will be dedicated April 6, was a Southern Pacific holding that hadn’t been used for more than 20 years.

Such rights of way are slowly being re-created as greenbelts by individuals, organizations and regional government agencies. In his recent book, “Greenways for America,” Charles E. Little shows how advocates envision linking these “linear parks into ever longer systems where hikers or cyclists can travel for hundreds of miles.”

Interest in turning railroad property and rights of way into hiking, biking and equestrian trails goes back more than 60 years. The approach was formalized with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit organization founded in 1985. The conservancy has more than 60,000 members nationwide.

Currently, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy records 279 trails covering 3,187 miles that have been created from abandoned rights of way. The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Trail in Virginia, a 44-mile route from the Potomac River to the Blue Ridge Mountains, is the most widely used of them.

California has more than 130 miles of such trails, including the Bizz Johnson trail near Susanville, which covers 30 miles, and the Ojai Valley trail, which has parallel paths for cyclists and equestrians.

Plans for converting railroad rights of way into greenbelts has frequently provoked spasms of the not-in-my-back-yard syndrome. Opponents claim the revived strips will be public nuisances attractive to criminals, the homeless and youngsters. Supporters argue that the abandoned rights of way already attract these people and that the greenbelts actually reduce problems.

Tustin resident Florence Paul is credited with sparking interest in converting the Esplanade strip in 1986, when she became determined to see the scruffy patch of county land improved. “It was an eyesore,” Paul says, noting that the property was being used as a parking lot for people to sell cars and that and two homeowners had built fences that encroached on the railroad property.

She decided to get the county to do something about it. “I didn’t let up on it,” she says.

Arranging the purchase of the land took time more than anything else, according to Robert Richardson, executive assistant to Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who took up Paul’s cause. Railroads have lots of real estate but small staffs, says Richardson. Getting their attention to carve a small piece from the pie takes persistence.

The piece had no commercial value and, according to Ken Scattergood, the county’s special districts administrator, the county acquired the property in 1988 for $250,000. It was paid for with revenue-sharing funds. The county spent another $265,000 preparing a xeriscape park that requires little water and low maintenance.

Feedback to the supervisors about the conversion has reportedly been positive, and Paul says, “I’ve had only compliments that somebody did something about it.”

While Esplanade Park was created independently of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, the organization is delighted to hear about such conversions and will help with information and advice, says John Wengert, the organization’s community affairs coordinator.

The conservancy has provided research to counter arguments against the Rails-to-Trails approach and publishes a legal manual that can be useful to city attorneys wrestling with conversions. It is also preparing a park manager’s manual for the design and management of rail trails.

While the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy hasn’t yet had a direct impact on Orange County, its spirit is alive and well here. Another vision for a trail took a step closer to reality last summer when Howard DeCruyenaere, a 31-year-old free-lance photographer from Santa Ana, founded the Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance.

The Santiago Creek greenbelt would be a creek-side trail available to cyclists and hikers and would also serve as a refuge for wildlife.

Santiago Creek courses from Irvine Lake through six parks on its way to the Santa Ana River. The entire length of the trail would be somewhere between 10 and 15 miles.

DeCruyenaere says he turned activist when developing companies “wanted to put a seven-acre shopping center over the creek I played on as a kid.” The Orange City Council stopped the shopping center and high-density residential area last August after noting community opposition to the project. DeCruyenaere says the developers have indicated they would be willing to sell the property, but a final price, expected to be $2 million or more, hasn’t been determined.

The idea for protecting the creek is not a new one. Though DeCruyenaere’s project wasn’t a rail right-of-way issue, he is confronted with similar problems and obstacles, and he has received advice from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

DeCruyenaere believes the Santiago Creek greenbelt could be created in stages. “In three years, I think we could have a partial greenway,” he says. “We’re planning a creek week in April to promote public awareness of the project and to do a cleanup of the creek April 20.”