Passage to park gaining support
Congressman Paul Tonko, Sen. Daphne Jordan speak in Castleton-on-hudson
The struggle for this small community to gain access to its waterfront park is gaining political clout with U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko and other elected officials getting behind a local effort to build a ground-level passage to a park that juts into the Hudson River.
The park, which sits on a stubby peninsula between the Hudson River and Amtrak’s Empire Corridor line, has been gated off since its purchase by the village in 1994, when Castleton and the state Department of Transportation agreed to block access until a pedestrian tunnel could be built.
The tunnel proved unfeasible, and the DOT offered in 2009 to construct a pedestrian bridge with elevators. However, Castleton rejected the plan. The village would have had to pay for the bridge’s maintenance out of its tiny budget of just over $1 million.
The DOT offered again to build the bridge in 2021, but residents say it would be an eyesore and its footprint would take up much of the park, which is less than an acre. Route to the River, a coalition of residents and local groups, instead want a modern, ground-level crossing with warning lights and fence-like gates that close when a train is approaching.
The rally Saturday, organized by Route
to the River, included Tonko, state Sen.daphne Jordan and Castleton Village Mayor Joe Keegan as speakers.
Tonko said Route to the River’s demands were justified.
“We are all here for public safety and I agree that access to your beautiful historic park is critical,” Tonko said.
“We’ll talk common sense to (New York state) DOT, to Amtrak and even to the federal DOT to see if there’s a way to intervene to get your demands met,” he said.
All agree safety is paramount. With minimal official crossings up and down Amtrak’s Empire Corridor, anglers, birdwatchers and naturephiles still trespass to access the river, putting themselves in danger of being struck by trains. A fisherman was killed by a train last summer in Columbia County at a popular unofficial crossing, and, earlier this month, a Kingston woman and her dog died on the tracks in Rhinecliff.
Jordan defined the issue as a lack of local control.
“Today is about ensuring that resident’s voices are heard and that, after 28 long years of inaction, broken promises, and mind-numbing bureaucracy, public access to this beautiful Riverfront Park along the Hudson River is finally restored with a ground-level pedestrian crossing,” she said.
The ground-level crossing would also be far cheaper. A white paper produced by the regional conservation group Scenic Hudson estimates these crossings would cost as little as a fifth of the price of erecting a pedestrian bridge with elevators.
The state DOT did not respond to questions about a potential pedestrian crossing before publication of this article.