Common early successional habitats in the eastern United States are regeneration after timber harvests, utility right-of ways and reclaimed surface mines.
To reduce tax burdens, railroads generally dispose of right-of-ways shortly after ending service.
Signs prominently posted near the six right-of-ways also prohibit parking except with permits available only to village residents.
I've defined "metro" as high-capacity urban heavy rail systems that run on grade-separated right-of-ways.
The battle in Union County should serve as a lesson to all property owners living near inactive railroad right-of-ways.
Now, as far as I can tell, the biggest fall crop in Columbia County is political lawn signage, flourishing on road shoulders and medians and right-of-ways as well as front lawns.
One possible setup would allow Metro-North to charge a wireless company for access to its trains or right-of-ways, with the companies charging riders to log on.
The cost would be limited somewhat, he said, if the pipeline followed right-of-ways now being created for China's huge West-East natural gas pipeline project, which is to carry gas from fields near the Kazakh border to Shanghai.
"Those devalued lives," she writes, "like the truckers', are unimaginable outside the landscapes highway federalism built: the anonymous world of exit ramps, right-of-ways and travel plazas where places are numbers, people are anonymous, and human interaction is entirely mediated by commerce".
But the broad right-of-way remains.
"We closed the right-of-way," Mrs. Freedman recalled.
