Rails to Trails Conversions

Rails-to-Trails Land Taking

In 1983, Congress amended the National Trails System Act, which is also known as the Rails-to-Trails Act. The Act grants the federal government the authority to turn abandoned railroad right-of-ways into a nationwide system of recreational trails. The Act includes a program that lets railroad companies transfer the land under their railroad tracks to organizations, cities, or individuals who will convert it into recreational trails for public use. In order to transfer this land, the federal government, through the Rails-to-Trails Act, puts into motion a “taking” of the abandoned railroad corridors, which likely would have reverted to the adjoining landowners.

Typically this is how the process occurs:

• A railroad company abandons or stops using a railway corridor.
• The federal government “takes” that land back for another use, such as a community recreation trail.
• Private property owners adjacent to the land can demand to be fairly paid for that transfer of property since they’re not getting it back.
• The property owner files a lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington D.C. asking for “just compensation” for the taking of his or her land.

What’s unusual in Rails-to-Trails land seizures is that the federal government takes what appears to be the railroad’s track for public use, but you may actually own the land under the tracks and thus be entitled to compensation. Mctlaw also represents property owners and tribal clients in Federal Takings claims over community rails to trails conversions.

‘Just Compensation’ and What it Means for Property Owners

The federal government has a constitutional right to take your private land for public use.  Sometimes the government takes away land to widen a highway or create a recreational trail for the benefit of the entire community.

When this happens, landowners are protected by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.  There’s a section of the Fifth Amendment known as the “Just Compensation Clause” and it requires the federal government to pay landowners fair market value for any property taken.

In Rails-to-Trails conversions, if your property is next to the former railway, the government may owe you money for the section of land that makes up the new trail.  You may still hold title to the land even though you don’t have use of the land or even realize you had an ownership interest in the land.

Over the last 15 years, thousands of property owners have filed Rails-to-Trails claims against the federal government in more than 150 trail projects.