11.2 Highway, County Road, Railroad & Utility Rights-of-Way

Fee or easement?

"Right-of-way" can mean either the land itself or a right to pass over land. The difference controls minerals, reversion on abandonment, and how you retrace the corridor.

• Granting language. "Grant, bargain, sell and convey a strip of land 100 feet wide…" generally indicates fee. "A right-of-way over and across…" or "an easement for railroad (or highway) purposes" generally indicates an easement.
• Whole-instrument intent. Purpose clauses, reverter clauses, consideration, and the rest of the deed can change the result. Courts read the whole instrument.
• Consequences. When an easement use is abandoned, the underlying fee owner holds the land free of it. That owner is often the abutting owner, commonly to the corridor's centerline when the corridor was taken from both sides. When the corridor was held in fee, the holder keeps it after abandonment.

MDOT highways

The Mississippi Department of Transportation acquires rights-of-way by deed or eminent domain and defines them on right-of-way plans:

• a survey baseline or centerline, stationed in 100-foot stations (Sta. 12+50 is 1,250 feet from 0+00);
• alignment points: POT (point on tangent), PC, PI, PT, and POC (point on curve), with curve data (radius, delta, length, chord);
• station equations where alignments meet (for example, "145+22.10 Back = 145+00.00 Ahead"); and
• offsets to right-of-way lines: perpendicular on tangents, radial on curves, with tapers between stations.

Retracement: obtain the plans and the acquisition deeds for the parcel. Recover alignment and right-of-way monuments, such as concrete right-of-way markers and project control, and reconstruct the baseline from recovered control and plan geometry. Then set the right-of-way line at the recorded offsets. Show recovered right-of-way monuments and the source plans on the plat (Rule 7.3, items 4, 9, and 16).

County roads (§§ 65-7-1, 65-7-4)

• Jurisdiction. The board of supervisors has full jurisdiction over county public roads: establishing, laying out, opening, abandoning, altering, and maintaining them (§ 65-7-1).
• Width. Roads laid out and opened according to law "shall be opened and worked at least sixteen (16) feet wide, wherever practicable, and in any case not less than twelve (12) feet," and wider if necessary, with ditches kept open to drain the roadbed.
• Official road system. Since July 1, 2000, no road is part of the county road system unless the board, "by appropriate action spread on its minutes," established or accepted it and entered it in the official record of the county road system. Section 65-7-4 required each county to adopt, by that date, an official road map and a road register listing each road with its termini and a memorandum of every proceeding, citing minute book and page.

What this means for surveyors. Check the county's road map and register and the board minutes before assuming a traveled road is a county road, and before assuming any particular width. A road's legal width comes from its source: a deed, a dedication and acceptance, a court decree, or the extent of public use where a public right arose by prescription. Plats should label roads by status and source, and should note any abutting platted street that is not physically open (Rule 7.3, item 16).

Railroads

• Valuation maps. Under the federal Valuation Act of 1913, railroads prepared valuation maps of their lines. The maps show centerline stationing, right-of-way widths, the acquiring instruments (often indicating fee or easement), and ties to PLSS lines. They are essential for retracing railroad corridors, including spiral transitions between tangents and curves.
• Mississippi rule (§ 73-13-49(1)(i)). A railroad's regular employees may survey the railroad's own facilities without a license. New right-of-way acquisitions for construction of rail lines by class one railroads must be surveyed and platted by a Mississippi professional surveyor under the Standards of Practice. When track is removed and a line abandoned, the railroad must retain its valuation surveys and make them available to Mississippi licensed surveyors on reasonable request.
• Abandonment. Interstate rail lines are under federal jurisdiction. A carrier needs Surface Transportation Board authority to abandon a line (49 U.S.C. § 10903). Until then, state-law reversion rules do not operate.
• Railbanking. The National Trails System Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1247(d), allows a corridor to be "railbanked" for interim trail use subject to possible future rail reactivation. Railbanking prevents abandonment and so keeps state-law reversion from taking effect. In Preseault v. ICC, 494 U.S. 1 (1990), the Supreme Court upheld the statute and noted that owners whose reversionary rights are affected may seek compensation under the Tucker Act. Preseault v. United States, 100 F.3d 1525 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (en banc), later found a compensable taking where the trail use exceeded the original easement.

Utility corridors

Utility easements are typically in gross, commercial, and transferable. Their scope, including width, the right to add lines, clearing, and access, comes from the grant. Unlocated blanket grants are usually fixed by the location of the facilities as built. Show recorded utility easements with recording references, and show observed facilities that have no recorded instrument, with a note (Section 11.1).