I Fought the Railroad (and the Railroad Won)

[John Ashworth]

I Fought the Railroad (and the Railroad Won)

Railroads were central to the foundation of countless American towns, particularly in the second half of the 19th-century. As we've written about before, they operated very differently from the ways we plan and build public transportation today. A railroad would receive a land grant and would pay for construction of the tracks by developing the land around a new station. It's not unlike the value-capture model still used in countries like Japan today. But in the U.S., these early railroads were also given ridiculously expansive legal authority, including, very often, exemption from eminent domain laws.

This fact bedevils, to this day, countless advocates who want to do something to improve access for their community but run into the brick wall of railroad land rights. A railroad that refuses to come to the table can stop a big project in its tracks—such as the extension of the popular Midtown Greenway bike path across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. But it can also doom modest, small bets that could otherwise be spearheaded by residents to improve their own neighborhoods...