Management/Maintenance:

Before a trail or greenway is constructed, there should be a plan in place for its future, including answers to these key questions:

• Who will manage the trail or greenway?
• How will funds for maintenance be secured for future years?
• How is the trail or greenway protected in the face of potential change in uses of adjacent land?
• What is to happen if someone else wants or needs to share or cross the trail or greenway corridor?
• How will the safety of trail users be ensured every hour of every day all year long?

How these questions are answered will affect how the trail or greenway should be designed. There are many possible answers to all of these questions, and no surefire strategy for long-term trail success. What is certain, however, is that at all times trail and greenway planners must look toward the future.

Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has produced some helpful publications to provide more guidance in developing a management/maintenance plan. These include "Trails for the Twenty-First Century", which you can learn more about and/or purchase here.

The Northeast Regional office of Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, in cooperation with the USDA Americorps, completed a study of trail maintenance practices in 1996 that has been used ever since as a reference for maintenance strategies and costs. View the full text of "Rail-Trail Maintenance: Preparing for the Future of Your Trail" here.

One of the most crucial but least understood aspects of trail management is the handling of easements, leases and licenses granted by trail managers for others to use, share or cross the trail or greenway corridor. To resolve these issues for its own park system, the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA) developed a Manual on Policies and Procedures Governing Easements and Licenses and Non-Regional Park Uses of NVRPA Property. This manual is not currently available online, but copies are available upon request from our technical assistance department. This publication is a useful supplement to the information about corridor co-use in "Trails for the Twenty-First Century".

Sample Legal Resources
Sample Power Easement
Read a sample easement in which a non-profit trail group grants a power company an easement to install and maintain power lines on a portion of the rail corridor.

Sample Sewer Easement
Read a sample easement in which a non-profit trail group grants an easement across the trail to an individual adjacent landowner so that the landowner can have a sewer line built under the trail.