The Capital Crescent
Trail, the busiest rail trail in the United States according to the Project
for Public Spaces, got the Minkoff Company kicked off of CCT land because they failed to follow through on the 1998 agreement that allowed them to park there.
The agreement allowed the Minkoff Company to park its commercial vehicles on county land located next to its property at 5223 River Road along the Capital Crescent Trail. Minkoff’s use of the property, which predates the trail, was contingent upon funding and building a plaza for trail users including public parking spaces, a water fountain, benches and improved landscaping.
After years of delays and recent complaints from trail advocates, Duncan’s Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Scott W. Reilly said the county is cutting ties with Minkoff and will seek other means of building the trail plaza.
Mr. Minkoff had delayed the project because he planned to redevelop the land and he wanted assurances from the county that redeveloping his office buildings would not affect their agreement. The CCCT are quite proud of themselves.
In other news the CCT recently got a new accolade as the Rails to Trails Conservancy "Trail of the Month." There are a lot of good tidbits in the article including this:
the trail has its own rush
hour that coincides closely with that of local roads and at its most crowded
the trail can verge on unpleasant.
In this month's RTC magazine there's an article on Peter Harnik, former head of the RTC and Arlington, VA local yokel. He's photographed on the Met Branch Trail next to the New York Avenue station, which is odd, since the Met Branch isn't a rail-to-trail and that section he's on isn't open. They also quote him with this:
Washington, D.C., and some other cities don’t yet have their trail advocates aligned with public officials. “Everything you do in a city is more complicated.” Harnik says
I'll agree about the complicated part, but DC doesn't have a lot of abandoned railroad to work with. There's the Shepard Industrial Spur (which the city can't get their hands on), the old Glen Echo trolley line (which would need a lot of work), a spur to St. Elizabeths, a bridge over NY Avenue and the obliterated right of way of the Chesapeake Beach Railway. On which rail-to-trail projects are local trail advocates suppose to align with public officials?
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