Rails-to-trails activist Burwell dies at 69

David Burwell, 69, the Ivy League-educated lawyer-turned-public activist who helped convert abandoned railroad lines into trails and parks, died Feb. 1 at his home in Bethesda, Md.

The Massachusetts native co-founded and was the first president of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy of Washington, D.C. He died of complications from acute myeloid leukemia, according to reports.

Burwell was inspired by his mother’s efforts to create a bike trail on Cape Cod, and built the first nationwide movement to preserve green space and corridors for cyclists and other alternative modes of transportation.

A graduate of Dartmouth and University of Virginia law school, Burwell practiced law but later moved to Washington to work for a public advocate. In 1986 he started the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy with Peter Harnik. Together they convinced the Interstate Commerce Commission to formulate regulations that eased the conversion of old rail lines to trails. As an attorney, Burwell dealt with complicated ownership issues of rights-of-way, among other details.

“The idea of turning unused lines into a vibrant resource unites many people — hiking clubs, cyclists, wildlife advocates, political types who are community-oriented,” Burwell told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1997. “But you get long, skinny parks, cutting across several jurisdictions. Such things fall through the cracks of conventional government. Who has the current title? Who’ll fund the trail, who winds up managing it? That’s where we arrive, to provide expertise.”

A major victory came in 1991 with the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), which reserved a portion of federal highway funds for projects other than paved roads. That helped local groups buy old railroad property, pull up tracks or build new trails next to existing rail lines.

Today there are more than 2,000 trails on 22,000 miles of rail corridors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with another 8,000 miles in the planning stage. The longest, the John Wayne Pioneer Trail, runs for 253 miles in the state of Washington.

After practicing law in Boston and Vermont, Burwell moved to Washington in the late 1970s to work on transportation issues for the National Wildlife Federation. He stepped down as president of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy in 2001 to found the Surface Transportation Policy Project. He later worked as a consultant on transportation, the environment and urban policy before directing the energy and climate program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2010 to 2014.