Longtime bike path advocate Rick Sharp, who now runs the tour company Burlington Segways Inc., wants the city to relocate a path segment between College and King streets to the west side of the railroad tracks to avoid having the path cross the rails.
“This is the last piece of the bike path that needs to be corrected,” Sharp said, adding that the city has done an admirable job in recent years of renovating much of the rest of the path.
Sharp collected the signatures with help from his company, according to a document on its website explaining the purpose and history behind the advisory question.
Moving the bike path to the west side of the railroad tracks would avoid “bottlenecks” on either side at Ice Cream Bob’s and the Local Motion Trailside Center, Sharp said. The tracks themselves are a “big hazard” for bicycles, skateboards and inline skates, which have wheels that can get stuck in rail grooves, he added.
Sharp rejected the notion that the ballot question is designed to benefit his company, saying the Segway motorized personal vehicles his company uses have tires that are too large to be tripped up by the tracks.
The question on November’s ballot reads: “Should the Mayor of Burlington and the City Council be advised to relocate the Burlington Bicycle Path to the west side of the railroad tracks between College and King streets even if that means utilizing the public trust doctrine or eminent domain to accomplish this task?”
The public trust doctrine is a legal principle stating that some resources, such as shorelines, must be available for public use. It has been successfully applied to Lake Champlain, including filled land on the Burlington waterfront.
To keep the bike path from crossing railroad tracks, it would need to pass through private property owned by Lake Champlain Transportation, which operates ferries on the lake.
Heather Stewart, Lake Champlain Transportation operations manager, did not return a request for comment. She has previously told Seven Days that the company uses that land to access ferries and make deliveries during high water.
Jesse Bridges, director of parks, recreation and waterfront, said the city has long wanted to move the bike path west of the tracks through that section but suggested the private property and engineering challenges present obstacles to that vision.
“The conceptual plan has always been to have the path to the west of the tracks,” Bridges said, but he cautioned: “It’s a complicated stretch of property.”
Further complications could arise with the planned arrival of Amtrak trains, Bridges said, adding that it’s not clear what the passenger rail service’s needs will be through that area.
Sharp said this is the seventh and final time he plans to try to spur action on a bike path through a petitioned vote. He got started 30 years ago. Now 64, he said of his efforts to improve Burlington’s path: “This is my mission in life.”
