Creating a trail for bicyclists, walkers and runners to bisect Lynnfield sounds like a well-intentioned and non-controversial idea. But the fierce debate pitting rail trail opponents and supporters suggests the project strikes at the heart of how town residents view Lynnfield.
The trail has been discussed, debated and denounced with the Board of Selectmen prepared to bring the idea before Town Meeting for discussion. Both sides in the debate offer reasons worth pondering when it comes to opposing or supporting a rail trail.
Advocates say a trail will promote local fitness and alternate transportation options when many communities are embracing similar objectives. Opponents are worried about the trail attracting people using drugs and criminals scouting local residences for an unlocked home or car door.
Arguments on both sides of the discussion are compelling but they do not get to the so-called heart of the matter.
Lynnfield is a small town with a decidedly rural feel that has survived even as suburban subdivisions mix with the town’s older neighborhoods. It borders other communities but it is a community unto itself and, like people in most small towns, its residents cherish tradition and view change with at least a dose of suspicion.
For every proponent who argues the trail will attract only local bicyclists and runners, there is an opponent arguing the trail will be a magnet for non-Lynnfield residents who don’t, frankly, belong in the town even though they are basically passing through it.
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The argument against the trail, to some degree, is an argument for preventing Lynnfield’s identity from being eroded. In opponents’ minds, the trail takes on the ominous appearance of an anonymous byway frequented by people, upstanding as well as unsavory, who can use the trail to get within proximity of local homes and neighborhoods.
That flight of the imagination is underpinned with paranoia but small towns like Lynnfield stay small because they tend to look inward and prioritize self interests over notions of regional cooperation or other expansive pursuits.
Opponents are likely to go before Town Meeting and argue that questions of sensible land use, property encroachment, conservation priorities and a hundred other detailed points of argument should define and, ultimately, defeat the rail trail. Proponents will really have only one argument to make in favor of the trail: It makes sense in Lynnfield and anywhere else to provide a resource, if one is available, that benefits everyone.
In a town where not a lot changes, a rail trail might just be too blatant an invitation for rest of the world to come to Lynnfield.