Snowmobilers amenable to ARTA’s track conversion ideas
Jim McCulley, ARTA board member and president of the Lake Placid Snowmobile Club holds a clipboard as Angela Burleigh puts the 10,000th signature on a petition to the governor and other state officials calling for a 90-mile rail trail between Lake Placid and Old Forge/ Photo by Lee Keet.
Adirondack Recreational Trail Advocates (ARTA), a non-profit citizen organization that seeks to establish a year-round, multi-use recreation trail utilizing the railroad corridor between Lake Placid and Old Forge, signed up its 10,000th supporter at the Snodeo event held in Old Forge over the weekend of December 8 and 9.
Angela Burleigh of Oriskany Falls became number 10,000 when she signed the ARTA petition at the annual snowmobile event sponsored by the Central Adirondack Association (CAA).
ARTA is proposing a 90-mile trail that would run through the heart of the region on the old rail bed of the Adirondack Division of the New York Central Railroad.
It envisions the proposed rail trail as a world-class venue for bicyclists, walkers, runners, bird watchers, wheel-chair users, families with young children, senior citizens and commuters.
With the deteriorating tracks and ties removed, the rail bed will also serve as a greatly improved snowmobile trail connecting Old Forge with Tupper Lake and hundreds of miles of snowmobile trails beyond.
According to an ARTA-commissioned study released earlier this year by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC), the 34-mile stretch of corridor between Lake Placid and Tupper Lake would attract a quarter-million annual tourists to the Tri-Lakes area.
These tourists would spend an estimated $20 million here, according to RTC. The projections are based on the popularity of comparable rail trails in other parts of the country.
“But every bit as important as the economic impact are the quality- of-life benefits for residents and visitors,” said Joe Mercurio, ARTA’s president.
“A safe, scenic trail connecting our communities—an easy, level pathway where people of all ages and physical abilities can enjoy healthy exercise in a superb natural setting—is the only recreational amenity that has been lacking in the Adirondack Park. The 120-year-old rail bed is readymade for this purpose,” Mercurio added.
The petition will be presented to Governor Cuomo and the commissioners of the state Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Conservation, with a request that priority be given to updating the state’s unit management plan (UMP) that governs use of the corridor between Remsen and Lake Placid.
The plan was supposed to have been reviewed twelve years ago.
In recent months, a number of local governments along the corridor have passed resolutions in favor of revisiting and updating the UMP.
