When the Hudson Line, which runs along the river's east shore, was completed in 1851, people regularly crossed the tracks to fish, swim or picnic. But in recent years Metro-North, in the name of public safety, has been trying to make criminals out of those who simply want to enjoy such activities.
On an August day in 1992, Ed Nazak of Wappinger Falls, N.Y., his wife and two sons crossed the tracks in New Hamburg and set out down the river in their canoe. A few hundred feet from where they put in, a Metro-North police officer ordered them ashore. Mr. Nazak complied but under protest, asserting that the railroad ''couldn't possibly have the right to chase my family off the river.'' He was handcuffed, charged with criminal trespass and fingerprinted. In exchange for not contesting the charge and agreeing to stay away from the railroad tracks, he ultimately had his case dismissed.
Mr. Nazak's was the first of hundreds of such cases in New York. Fishermen, boaters, windsurfers, hikers and hunters say they have been ticketed, arrested or chased by Metro-North police, sometimes at gunpoint.
Of course Metro-North is concerned about the potential for injury when people cross railroad tracks. But people have crossed the tracks to get to the river for many years. And public safety will remain an issue as long as Metro-North refuses to provide proper crossings and pedestrian bridges, especially at popular fishing spots.
Indeed, the railroad has an obligation to allow the public to use the river. When the New York State Legislature turned over thousands of acres of Hudson shoreline and submerged land to the railroads in the mid-19th century, it required that they maintain all public access points to the water. Yet this requirement has been all but forgotten. Though turn-of-the-century maps show hundreds of crossing points between Albany and New York City, today there are fewer than 40 by which people can reach the river.
In Connecticut, by contrast, Metro-North's New Haven Line does not discourage public access to Long Island Sound. Under the state's coastal management law, the railroad is required to ''improve or have a negligible adverse effect on coastal access and recreation.''
The right of the public to use navigable waters is an ancient one. Roman law held that neither government nor private parties could cut off such access. In the early 13th century, the exclusion of the public from England's forests and streams helped prompt the citizen revolt that resulted in Magna Carta. Among the rights affirmed by Magna Carta were ''liberty of navigation'' and a ''free fishery.''
And in a landmark 1892 case, the United States Supreme Court nullified the Illinois Legislature's grant of a thousand acres of Lake Michigan shoreline and underwater land to the Illinois Central Railroad because it was ''a title held in trust for the people of the state that they may enjoy the navigation of waters, carry on commerce over them, and have liberty of fishing therein.''
An official of Metro-North recently responded to fishermen's pleas to reopen traditional rail crossings to the Hudson by saying that it is in the business of operating a railroad, not providing access to the river. Metro-North is indeed in the business of running a railroad. But it also has an obligation to let people use the river.
And until it does, the only place many families will feel safe enjoying the Hudson is from the window seat of a Metro-North train.
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