Sacramento Bike Trail Connecting Land Park to Meadowview Moves Forward After City Wins Lawsuit

A plan for a rails-to-trails recreational path that would run for 4.5 miles from the Sacramento Zoo to Meadowview is once again moving forward. 

The plan was approved by the city council in 2019, but plans were stalled after a railroad preservation group filed a lawsuit seeking to preserve the existing track in the area. Last week, however, a Sacramento County judge ruled in favor of the city.

“This will provide an amenity in an area that doesn’t currently have them... particularly as we grow as a city, one of the things we want to think about is providing these things to our residents in their neighborhoods where they live so they can have low stress mobility choices,” said Jennifer Donlon Wyant, the city’s transportation and planning manager.

The Sacramento Rail Preservation Action Group, which filed the lawsuit to stop the trail’s construction, had proposed an alternate plan, advocating instead that the city preserve and rehabilitate the railroad tracks and use them to create an excursion train that could provide a scenic tour of the area. 

The railroad is over 100 years old but has been out of commission since 1978. The group has said that destroying the railroad tracks to build the trail will lead to destruction of a historic railway, including the Central Pacific Railway Depot. 

“Though your project team has made great progress to preserve the rails, the Foundation's Old Sacramento Committee and Board believe the city needs to do more to preserve not just the idea that the Del Rio Trail corridor was once a viable rail line, but also to show that the rail line could potentially be viable again under the right circumstances,” Cheryl Marcell, president of the Rail Preservation Action Group, said in a letter to the city in 2018. CapRadio’s requests for direct comment from the group were not returned.

The lawsuit alleged that the city had incorrectly done an Environmental Impact Review of the area, but Sacramento Superior Court Judge James P. Arguelles ruled against that. 

Donlon Wyant said the city has done its best to compromise with the preservation group in their trail plan, and have said that their current plan would preserve 98% of the existing railroad track. 

The project will now move forward with its proposed timeline, with construction starting in the spring of 2022 and opening for use in late 2022.