A fierce debate is underway over the future use of the rail corridor that stretches from Lake Placid to Tupper Lake, and then on to Old Forge and Utica.<\/p>\n
An increasingly diverse and high-powered group led by prominent activists<\/a> Lee Keet, Tony Goodwin, Dick Beamish and Jim McCulley is insisting that the tourist train should be scrapped and replaced by a year-round multi-used trail.<\/p>\n There’s a lot of push-back, naturally, much of it from similarly high-powered folks like Kate Fish, head of the Adirondack North Country Association.<\/p>\n It’s certainly a fair and timely debate to have, and both sides have strong arguments.<\/p>\n Trail supporters say the tourism train is a bust, with few riders and little potential for growth.\u00a0 They say taxpayers should stop subsidizing a boondoggle and they’re convinced the route would flourish as a multi-use trail.<\/p>\n Rail advocates point to the fact that the current state Department of Transportation leadership supports maintaining the railroad.\u00a0 That means the likelihood of more big financial grants for the region, despite New York’s fiscal crisis.<\/p>\n They also continue to maintain hope that the train will attract a growing ridership, once it extends to more scenic areas in Tupper Lake and perhaps beyond.<\/p>\n But as the debate rolls forward, railroad advocates are putting forth one argument that strikes me as far-fetched and a bit of a distraction.\u00a0 Namely the notion that this train route will ever again be a regularly-used travel corridor.<\/p>\n “The railroad is not the enemy. Rather, it is the most cost- and energy-efficient mode of motorized land transport on the planet,” Fish wrote, in a recent commentary for the Adirondack Almanack<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Looking beyond recreation, it would be tremendously short sighted and a great failure of imagination to remove expensive infrastructure on the only rail corridor coming into the heart of the Adirondacks.”<\/p>\n Which leads to the obvious question:<\/p>\n Does anyone really think it would be viable to operate a year-round industrial-and-passenger railroad through the most remote and rugged terrain in the Northeast — a line, furthermore, that would service only around 20,000 permanent residents?<\/p>\n Canadian Pacific struggles sometimes to keep open their North Country corridor through the Champlain Valley, despite the fact that it connects two of the largest cities on the east coast.<\/p>\n Imagine the difficulties of maintaining a route through the wilderness around Lowes Lake and the Five Ponds Wilderness.<\/p>\n