By Richard Conn/Daily News Staff
Daily News Tribune
Posted Mar 04, 2008 @ 11:42 PM
WALTHAM —

City council members who were worried that the Wayside Rail Trail negotiations fell off the track were encouraged by yesterday's update.

City Planner Ted Fields said he talked last week with an official from the Department of Conservation and Recreation who said that there had been significant movement in discussions with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to iron out a 99-year lease for some of its surplus right-of-way property. The former railroad bed would be used for a 26-mile stretch of a bike and walking trails.

A major roadblock in negotiations was removed when the Federal Department of Transportation recently reversed a long-standing policy and decided not to require reimbursement of federal funds used to build the trail should the property ever revert back to use as a railroad line, Fields said.

"It's certainly an encouraging development," Fields said.

Waltham officials had been in talks since 2003 to lease property from the MBTA to build its three-mile section of the rail trail that would extend from the Linden Street Bridge to the Weston town line.

However, last year, the state department asked that the city suspend those talks so it could negotiate its own lease with the rail authority. But city officials had not been informed of the status of those talks, prompting Councilor at Large Patrick O' Brien, among others, last month to urge the state for an update.

O'Brien said an e-mail he received from Fields Friday claimed the Department of Conservation and Recreation official was hopeful that the lease with the MBTA could be executed by the summer.

"It's definitely the most encouraging news in years," O'Brien said yesterday.

Preliminary estimates show the design and construction of the three-mile portion of Waltham's trail could cost about $3 million.

Waltham and other municipalities first pursued a rail trail in the mid-1990s, but momentum was stymied when voters in Weston turned down the proposal at Town Meeting in 1997.

Trains have not run on Waltham's portion of the trail since 1978.

Richard Conn can be contacted at 781-398-8004 or rconn@cnc.com.