Astoria Riverwalk improvements remove stumbling blockYou’re walking along the trestle behind Astoria Warehousing on a Sunday evening, headed toward the Holiday Inn Express.

The salt air is invigorating and you’re enjoying a spectacular view of the Astoria Bridge. Suddenly, the tracks start shaking. A loud, insistent bell is ringing in your ears. When you turn to look, you see a 20-ton trolley bearing down on you and there’s no way to escape! What a nightmare.

Soon, that scenario won’t even be a possibility any more, because the trestle is being widened in three spots.

New “bulb-outs” will give pedestrians a safe place to stand while the colorful behemoth clacks harmlessly by. The improvements are part of the $449,000 River Trail West project in progress that will extend the Astoria Riverwalk all the way to the Port of Astoria.

From the initial two-block segment from 15th Street to 17th Street, completed in 1995, the Astoria Riverwalk has extended as far as 43rd Street on the east.

In the next few days, the River Trail, as it’s known outside of the downtown area, will meet up with Hamburg Street on the west, just a stone’s throw from the Astoria Roundabout. The total amount spent on the trail/Riverwalk project to date is $1,639,000, the lion’s share from state and federal grants.

A $20 investment was all it took to get the ball rolling on Astoria’s riverfront renaissance. In 1997, the city paid Burlington Northern Railroad that small sum for the deed to a 5-mile stretch of tracks from Smith Point to Tongue Point. Acquiring the railroad right-of-way cleared the path to extend the city’s fledgling riverwalk along the entire riverfront. Persuading railroad officials to leave the tracks in place paved the way for the city’s enormously successful Riverfront Trolley, which started running in 1999.

The vision for a trail and walkway along the river came out of the 1990 Astoria Waterfront Planning Study, which Astoria City Manager Dan Bartlett described as a broad-based community plan. He said City Councils from that time forward supported it.

“For 14 years there has been consistent effort and progress towards achieving that dream,” Bartlett said.

The latest phase of the trail began this year with a contract awarded by the Oregon Department of Transportation to Rognlin Inc. of Aberdeen, Wash., low bidder on the River Trail West project. Now under way is work on the narrow trestle, and another one that starts behind the Ship Inn restaurant at No. 1 Second St. and continues to the east side of Astoria Warehousing. Both are part of a freight rail line constructed in 1896.

Concrete will be poured to form abutments at the ends of each trestle, said Mike Ramsdell, a retired city employee who is acting as a consultant. Old decking will be replaced with thick, heavy duty planks made from treated Douglas fir, and old hand railings will give way to modern ones that are safer for children, he said.

The contractor is also painting lines behind Astoria Warehousing to help separate pedestrians from heavy equipment. “It’s part of the working waterfront,” explained Astoria Public Works Director Mitch Mitchum.

But the biggest safety improvement will be three “bulb outs” on the first trestle. Until now, “the stumbling block has always been this trestle,” Ramsdell said, “because it doesn’t have a catwalk.” He said he expects people to use the bulb-outs not just as refuges, but as places to enjoy the view of the Columbia River and the Astoria Bridge.

Work on both trestles should be completed by the end of November. During that time, the contractor will work a four-day week so the Trolley can use the trestles on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Despite the rain, Rognlin Inc. managed to finish paving the last part of the Maritime Memorial to Portway Street segment with asphalt earlier this month. From there, a local contractor, Jim Wilkins Construction, will continue the trail along Industry Street, on past the Trolley Barn to Hamburg Street. Wilkins’ 10-foot wide walkway will be made of concrete, which can be poured and finished even during wet weather. Once the walkway is finished, the trail will connect via Hamburg with West Marine Drive and the sidewalk around the Astoria Roundabout.

With the latest extension, the trail is about 90-percent finished, Mitchum said.

“Connect all the dots, and you end up in Alderbrook,” he said, looking east from the vicinity of the Red Lion Inn and West Mooring Basin. Yet to be done is a segment that will run from 43rd Street to 54th Street along the railroad tracks, cut across sand fill to connect with streets in Alderbrook, then loop back and connect to the trail at 41st Street.

“I’m glad I won’t have to walk across those trestles anymore with the butterflies in my stomach doing the conga,” joked Roger Rocka, executive director of the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce. A big fan of the Riverwalk, he praised the city for hiring Murase Associates, a Portland urban design firm, in the early 1990s to come up with a long range plan.

“This is an example of how long-range thinking brings great benefit,” Rocka said. “It was too much to bite off at one time, so they did it piece by piece. Our culture today is too focused on having things happen ‘tomorrow,’ and we get less because of that,” Rocka said.

Actually, it was the chamber that originally came up with idea of a riverfront trail, said Mitchum. He said Don Budde, a former chamber director, showed him a study done in 1977 that was stymied because at that time the railroad would not cooperate. But the federal Rails to Trails program, passed by Congress in 1983 as part of the National Trails System Act, removed that roadblock by providing a process for railroads to transfer their rights-of-way to government entities.

“It’s a federal program and we took advantage of it,” said Mitchum. “Astoria is unique because under Rails to Trails legislation, the railroads almost always remove the tracks.” He said the city was already actively looking for a trolley in 1996, when officials persuaded Burlington Northern to leave the tracks in place.

But Mitchum harbors a much grander vision for the future. He sees the trail eventually crossing Youngs Bay Bridge and linking up with the Warrenton dike trail, then on to Fort Stevens State Park and from there to Rilea Armed Forces Training Center and the Fort-to-Sea Trail to Fort Clatsop.