The following e-mail was sent to the Courier Times Reporter, Chris English.
Re: Your Rails to Trails Article/Report, here are 22 additional points that haven’t yet been brought up.
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  1. If the trail is useful as a bicycling, jogging walking trail it would be even more useful as a road.
  2. None of the people who want the trail have any intention of paying for it.
  3. Payment for something they demand doesn’t seem to mean anything to the people who are demanding the trail.
  4. None of the people who want the trail mention their willingness to pay for the construction or maintenance of the trail.
  5. None of the people who are demanding the trail mention all of the trails that have been built. They are never happy and seem greedy in their demands without an offer to pay for their demands.
  6. Government is not supposed to provide trails. It was never given that power. People who want government to provide them with benefits should at least have the grace to explain how they will pay for what they demand.
  7. None of the people who demand a trail mention that the trail won’t be used for transportation which was the purpose of the railroad.
  8. None of them seem to realize automobiles replaced the railroad which is why SEPTA abandoned the railroad.
    If the people who are demanding the trail need exercise there are loads of places they can get exercise including all of the parks the taxpayers of Northampton paid for and which the people who want to exercise can use right now at no further cost to anyone.
  9. None of the people who want the trail are offering any of their land for a trail.
  10. The dilapidated railroad bridge over the Neshaminy creek would be extremely expensive to replace. It should probably be demolished by SEPTA because it’s dangerous as it is. There’s no dispute that SEPTA owns the dilapidated, dangerous bridge.
  11. SEPTA doesn’t have the power to lease the land. It was taken as an “Easement”, via it’s predecessor organizations for and only for railroad use.
  12. SEPTA may be operating “ultra juris”, above the law, by leasing the land because they don’t own it.
  13. When SEPTA abandoned the railroad they lost their control of the land because an abandoned easement, if it really was a legal easement taken and paid for by the government, reverts back to the property owner.
  14. The government took the land by Eminent Domain for a public purpose, i.e., to build a railroad, not to lease the land for non-railroad uses or purposes.
  15. That issue has never been brought up and it would prevail over SEPTA’s questionable use.
  16. Government didn’t actually take all of the land, only the “surface”. It issued an “Easement” meaning the railroads were given the power to use the surface of the land to build and operate a railroad.
  17. Northampton Township manager Robert Pelligrino explained the railroad was given a Fee Simple deed. He has been searching, unsuccessfully, for the deed. He will not find it because it does not exist.
  18. Government can take land but it must pay for it. That’s in the Fifth Amendment. None of the property owners were paid for the land or for the use of the land or for an easement for the use of the land in Northampton Township. That violated the Fifth Amendment and the violation continues.
  19. To emphasize by repetition: None of the property owners were paid for the easement for the use of their land in Northampton Township.
    The Right to own land applies only to individuals. No government entity needs Rights because they have Power. Rights are supposed to keep Power under control. When government took the land or even when it decided to use it but not compensate the property owners, it committed several Constitutional violations.
  20. In addition government is supposed to support the property Rights of the individuals. When it failed to do that it committed a violation of the Rights of the property owners.
  21. In addition it also had a duty to protect the Rights of the property owners which duty it also violated.
  22. There’s a law that covers a Violation of Rights under Color of Law. Cover of Law means when government uses it’s position as government to violate the Rights of an Individual. That law is codified as: 42 USC §1983. If SEPTA continues with its questionable claims to use the land for various purposes it may be increasing it violations of the Constitutions, both federal and state as well as the violations of the property rights of the adjacent landowners.

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