N.H. Government Unveils New West Leb Waterfront Park Delay

Collaborative effort will continue public inaccessibility to waterfront

WEST LEBANON— A few representatives from the NH Department of Transportation Rail Bureau gathered alongside the Connecticut River at the former Westboro Rail Yard to address the 20-year community effort to transform the waterfront property that has been abandoned for 40 years, and announce their latest effort to prolong the progress.

“We’re pleased to announce a new initiative that will ensure West Lebanon is kept in the 20th century,” said the NHDOT spokesperson, adding “it’s an important way to honor Westboro Yard’s heritage of abandonment and inaction.”

Vacant since the rail yard closed in the 1970s, the 22-acre Westboro parcel runs the entire length of downtown West Lebanon, stretching from the new bridge on Bridge Street to the collapsing bridge at the corner of Main Street and Seminary Hill.

The proposed Westboro Park and West Leb Greenway trail network (www.westleb.org/greenway) would connect from the Mascoma River Greenway to Boston Lot via downtown West Lebanon and River Park, along a “string of pearls” that has been called for in repeat community planning efforts for decades.

A commitment to bureaucratic apathy and the belief that the late 19th century heyday of railroad travel may return are among the strategies previously employed to ensure that the proposed park encounters sufficient delays.

Acknowledging that they had been busy designing a Route 12-A bridge big enough for two passenger trains to pass each- other on a line that only serves a concrete facility and dead-ends into 59-miles of rail trail the…