The Lake Oswego streetcar proposal was an interesting if expensive way to provide some rail service to an underdeveloped part of Portland's richest suburb. Now that the Lake Oswego City Council has killed the $208 million (today's dollars) Portland-Lake Oswego streetcar proposal, Portland and Lake Oswego need to move promptly on what to do with the right-of-way. Major portions of the right-of-way will revert to the adjoining landowners if railcars cease to use it. (The last few freight customers who used the line were driven off about 20 years ago.)
The logical course is to condemn the southern portion of the route for a bicycle and pedestrian path. Whichever agency took this project on would have to condemn the route from central Lake Oswego north past Fielding Road, then through the Elk Rock tunnel and north to where the track crosses Riverwood Road. From that point north to Powers Marine Park the bicycle path could follow Riverwood Road and Riverside Drive (Highway 43) and the railroad could be abandoned altogether.
The bike path would then enter the park and rejoin the existing track. The bike easement would have to be condemned from the Sellwood Bridge north to Willamette Park. At the north end of Willamette Park it could join the existing public path along the Johns Landing waterfront, which runs north to a point near Richardson Street from which the rail right-of-way could again serve as the bike path.
This reduces the number of homeowners through whose yards the path would run from three dozen to six. Several of those six might be willing to grant an easement for the bike path in exchange for the rails going away.
very rough calculation is that the cost to acquire the right-of-way for a bicycle path will be about $2 million. The cost to remove the rails and pave the path should be about $2 million. The unknown expense is the cost to light the Elk Rock Tunnel or to build a trestle around Elk Rock. It's still a project that can be done, if it's done now, before the landowners catch on and sue to enforce their reversionary rights.