Island Line Trail

The Island Line Trail, also known as the Colchester Causeway, is a 13.4-mile (21.6 km) rail trail located in northwest Vermont. It comprises the Burlington Bike Path (Burlington), Colchester Park (Colchester) and the Allen Point Access Area (South Hero). The trail follows the route of the Island Line railroad, built by the Rutland Railroad in 1901.

The trail on the Colchester Causeway at the northern bicycle ferry dock.

Island Line Trail
Facing north on the Island Line Trail.
Length	14 miles (23 km)
Location	Vermont
Use	Cycling
Website	www.localmotion.org/island_line_trail_map

There is a 200-foot (61 m) gap in the causeway that allows boat traffic to cross. A donation-based ferry operates in the summer months carrying trail users over the gap.

History

The history of the Rutland Railroad is covered in Robert C. Jones' "Railroads of Vermont, Volume 2" (ISBN 9781881535027) and in Jim Shaughnessy's "The Rutland Railroad", Howell-North Books, 1964.

Passenger service on the Rutland's Island Line (and on the entire Rutland RR system) ended after a strike by employees in late June, 1953. A second set of strikes, in 1960 and 1961, brought about the complete closure of the Rutland Railroad. The final trains ran on September 25, 1961. In 1963, the state of Vermont purchased the abandoned, but not torn-up, Rutland Railroad lines from Burlington to Rutland, North Bennington, Hoosick Junction and Bellows Falls, leasing them to the Vermont Railway and the Green Mountain Railroad to resume freight service, but the state chose not to acquire and reopen the Island Line.

There was little on-line traffic left on that portion of the route, and freight for Canada could be routed from Burlington north to Montreal over the somewhat-longer Central Vermont Railway through St. Albans, Vermont. After several years of inactivity, restoring service on the Island Line would have required extensive rebuilding, and renovations of the three swing bridges on the line over various bays of Lake Champlain. Ultimately, all of the swing bridges on the route were removed, but the roadbed on the causeway across the lake survived, as it was heavily built with much use of granite and marble tailings. The alignment along the shores of Lake Champlain from Burlington Union Station north to the causeway was converted to form the Burlington Bike Path, and later took the Island Line name when the causeway was reopened, with a seasonal bike-ferry replacing the swing bridge in the northern portion of the causeway alignment. Due to a 200-foot (61 m) gap in the causeway, the organization Local Motion operates the Island Line Bike Ferry to shuttle cyclists across the gap.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Recent developments

In May 2019, the Island Line Trail was damaged by a period of 70 mile-per-hour winds and 7-foot waves. The trail subsequently received nearly $2 million in upgrades and repairs between September 2019 and May 2020, during which time the trail was closed to public use.^[9][10]

A helicopter crashed into the causeway on July 30, 2021, closing the trail for three hours. The lone pilot escaped the wreckage and was taken to UVM Medical Center with minor to moderate injuries.^[11]