Long ago Mark Twain observed that "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." The same could apply to rail trails according to media coverage of a US Supreme Court decision in No. 12-1173, Marvin Brandt Revocable Trust v. U.S.
For those of you not familiar with rail trails, a 1988 law entitled the National Trails System Act established a program whereby railroad lines approved for abandonment by the Interstate Commerce Commission [now the Surface Transportation Board] could be converted into recreational trails provided the trail operator agrees to assume the liabilities and taxes associated with the right-of-way and acknowledges that the right-of-way could be restored to railroad service at any time in the future. Upon receiving abandonment approval the railroad typically sells or donates the right-of-way to the trail operator thus preserving the right-of-way and defeating any reversionary rights from adjoining landowners. The constitutionality of this 'taking" was upheld in Preseault v. United States, 100 F.3d 1533 (C.A. Fed. 1996).
Earlier this week the US Supreme Court released an 8-1 decision in Brandt (Justice Sotomayor dissented), reversing a United States Court of Appeals ruling and holding that a railroad right-of-way acquired by a railroad under the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1975 was an easement that terminated when the railroad abandoned it. This decision is significant in that treating the land under the railroad as a "right-of-way" conveyed by the Government returns ownership to it and defeats any reversionary claims of adjacent landowners while treating it as a mere easement restores the land to adjacent owners thereby defeating the Government's ownership. However, many news reports such as those from the Associated Press would lead the reader to believe that United States Government could be forced to pay many millions of dollars to landowners with reversionary rights to hundreds of miles abandoned railroad lines converted into trails.
The facts of the case are simple. As many people may know, the United States Government granted private railroads rights-of-way over public lands in the 19th Century as a way of settling and developing the West. Many years later in 1976 the US Government conveyed an 83-acre parcel of land in Wyoming to Melvin and Lulu Brandt. The grant reserved from the land a railroad right-of-way that at the time was owned by the Union Pacific Railroad. Eventually the UP sold the track and right-of-way to a newly organized short line railroad, the Wyoming & Colorado Railroad. But WYCO eventually abandoned the line and salvaged the track in 2004 pursuant to authority granted by the federal Surface Transportation Board. Thereafter the United States sought a court ruling quieting title to the right-of-way and obtained settlements or default judgments with all but the Brandts. But the Brandt's counterclaimed arguing that the railroad's and now the Government's interest in this strip of land was an easement and not a reversionary right of way. They appealed to the Supreme Court after the 10th Circuit United States affirmed a lower court ruling for the United States.
While this decision could have major implications for lands that reverted to the government upon termination of their use as railroad lines, it does not affect the efficacy of rail trails established under the Trails Act, the usual method today for preserving railroad lands for recreational purposes. There are two reasons for that conclusion. First, under the Trails Act a rail line designated for trail use is not considered legally "abandoned" despite the fact that railroad service has terminated and the track has been removed. Second, a substantial, if not the majority, of rail trails established today involve lines where the land is either held in fee or consists of a common law reversionary easement not a federal land grant. In fact any trail established on the WYCO line was not created under the Trails Act.
So cyclists and railroaders can both breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now.
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