Weston Puts a Glitch in the Wayside Rail Trail

Rising opposition in Weston to the construction of the 3-mile section of the Wayside Rail Trail through the town forced a reconsideration of the May 1997 Town Meeting approval of the Trail. A Special Town Meeting was held on Dec. 8, 1997 and over 1100 people showed up to vote on just one article,approval of the Trail. The article went down to defeat by 698 to 410. Despite this vote, the Trail will proceed in the other communities along the 25-mile route from Waltham to Berlin.

Of all the communities along the Wayside Rail Trail, Weston was the one that was most uncertain about the Trail. A significant organized opposition group got rolling even before the May 1997 Town Meeting. Politics is the art of compromise, so Trail supporters met with opponents and drafted a carefully worded compromise article for the Town Meeting. Trail proponents felt good when a 238 to 131 majority voted "to authorize the Board of Selectmen to apply for state and federal funding for the design and construction" of the trail subject to approval from town boards. A key part of the article required selectmen to create a working group (Task Force) to study various aspects of the trail and report back in six months. The Weston vote appeared to include the town in the list of the five other communities (Waltham, Wayland, Sudbury, Hudson and Berlin) who had voted overwhelmingly to proceed with the trail. However, events turned against the Trail approval in Weston.

The political background in Weston never boded well for Trail approval. Weston is the richest town (per capita income) in the state and a certain exclusiveness might be anticipated. Many very expensive homes sit near the rail bed. The rail bed extends westward from distinctly more blue-collar Waltham. The town has a long history of supporting the objections of abutters to changes near their properties. Last May, Town Meeting rejected a proposal from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority to pay Weston $3 million and some land for 23 acres of Weston land at Norumbega Reservoir. The water authority wanted to build a covered water supply tank there. After Town Meeting voted against the proposal, the MWRA filed a land-taking bill in the state Legislature and was recently given the land by the state. This infuriated many town residents and left a wariness toward state-orchestrated projects.

The Task Force set up by the May Town Meeting vote was assembled from both Trail supporters and proponents. However, trail opponents soon dominated the Task Force merely by showing up more consistently than the proponents. After endless meetings (nine subcommittees and 36 public meetings), the opponents on the Task Force wrote a voluminous "Final Report and Recommendations" with an 11-page summary and 11 appendices. When proponents objected to the overwhelming negative tone of the report, a vote was taken on approval. The catch is that a process had been established in which only those who had attended at least half of the meetings could vote. The opponents knew who had the vote. The report was approved 29 to 13 (even though over a hundred different people had attended the various meetings) and distributed to all Weston residents. The proponent's proposal to include a minority report was similarly voted down. In a last-minute effort, proponents appealed to the Selectmen who agreed that they could distribute a companion report. The rush to put together the proponent's report resulted in one which paled in comparison to that of the Trail opponents. The endless controversial Task Force process and the efforts of the opponents drew the attention of Weston residents and many letters and articles in the town paper. The resulting turmoil and negativism forced the Dec. Town Meeting reconsideration of Trail approval.

The Task Force report (available from the Town of Weston and on the Web) and the opponent's presentation at the Town Meeting paints a bleak worst-case scenario. The proposed Rail Trail is portrayed as inconsistent with the town's "character" and an invasive tourist attraction which would draw as many as 2 million outsiders into Weston yearly. This would reduce the "quality of life", generate a large tax burden required to police and maintain the trail (up to ten times that per mile on the Minuteman), reduce property values, stimulate a flood of tax-abatement requests, ruin the rail bed for the Weston equestrians who already use it, destroy conservation areas, and increase crime and litter. A negligible number of Weston residents would use the Trail and immense numbers of outsiders would arrive by car and create an impossible parking situation. No positive benefits to Weston are mentioned. The report concludes that it would be impossible to mitigate the negative effects and therefore the Trail through Weston should not be approved.

The minority report from those Task Force members which favored a Rail Trail is available online.

The two-page article for Trail approval submitted by the Selectmen to the Dec. Town meeting was detailed and highly restrictive. Among the stipulations, parking would be extremely limited and carefully enforced, a special environmental impact report requested, and equestrians accommodated. In addition, there would be no public access to the Trail at any of the major roads in Weston. Weston residents could access the trail by driving to the town dump! Even this restrictive article was overwhelmingly defeated.

There was extensive media coverage of the Weston vote in newspapers and on the radio including a long WBUR report. The national popularity of rail trails is indicated by the fact that news articles appeared in places as far away as Florida. The tone of many articles and columns was derisive of the NIMBY attitude of the richest town in one of the richest states.

Despite the Weston vote, the Wayside Rail Trail planning and construction will proceed. Options for routing Trail users through Weston will be found. One on-road route would start at Route 117 in west Waltham, proceed on 117 to Church St., then through the town center to the Old Boston Post Road, to route 20 and then to Plain Road in Wayland where the trail bed would be reentered. Weston's cooperation will be needed to provide signs and bicycle crossings for the route. Once Trail construction proceeds, it is likely that the rails will be taken up all along the rail bed, including Weston. This will make the rail bed accessible on mountain bikes. The only problem is that one bridge over the rail bed at Conant road in Weston has the underside filled with rubble to support the deteriorating bridge. This blocks the rail bed. This blockage can be skirted by a short on-road route. In fact, much of the rail bed and the adjacent conservation-land trails in the western part of Weston are now accessible (and open) to mountain bikes. As the Dec. Town Meeting vote incidicates, any vote can be reconsidered . Perhaps Weston will support the trail in the future.

For those who are interested in learning more about the thinking of rail-trial opponents, read the "official" report of the Weston Rail Trail Task Force.

The report on the web does not contain the eleven appendices, also written by the opponents. Because trail opponents outnumbered proponents on the task force, the "official" report is a highly negative worst-case description of rail trails and their impact on Weston. The opponents had the majority votes needed to exclude a minority report from the proponents.