Feds Reject Extension For Framingham To Buy Rail Trail Land

FRAMINGHAM, MA — A federal agency that oversees freight rail lines has denied Framingham's request to extend the deadline to buy a defunct railroad corridor for the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail — but the federal decision is not the end of the line.

Railroad giant CSX owns the nearly 3-1/2 miles of land from Sudbury to Route 9 needed to complete the final stretch of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail. Framingham on Nov. 16 asked the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) — the agency that regulates freight railways — to extend the deadline for negotiating a purchase by one year.

But CSX opposed Framingham's request, and is instead creating a way that would extend the purchase deadline for a year or perhaps longer.

A CSX subsidiary, the Georgetown and High Line Railway Company (GHL), has notified STB that it will take over the Framingham railway property. Then, GHL will seek to designate the land as a trail. That would remove the need for Framingham to continue seeking deadline extensions from the STB.

"It creates a new timeframe for us to negotiate because we'll be negotiating with a new entity," Framingham Chief Operating Officer Thatcher Kezer told the City Council on Tuesday.

Once complete, the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail (BFRT) would be one of the longest in the state, stretching 25 miles from Route 3 in Lowell south to near Tower Street off of Route 9 in Framingham. The trail is only complete from Lowell to Powder Mill Road in Concord just short of the Sudbury town line (excluding a bridge over Route 2 near the Acton-Concord line).

The Framingham section of the BFRT will be the last to be completed. Sudbury in 2020 made several major moves to complete the third phase of the trail from the Concord border to Framingham.

The first portion of the trail in Sudbury from Concord to Route 20 is in the design stage, with construction set for 2023. In November, Sudbury voters approved the purchase of 1.3 miles of former CSX corridor between Route 20 and the Framingham city line.