Walk the Walk

With summer here, NorthBay biz looks at the various hiking trail projects that aim to give Bay Area residents new reasons to stay outdoors.

 

Back in the 1950s, when local hiker Larry Audiss was a kid, he could take his rifle and pals and traipse into the woods, splash through streams and hike all over Sonoma’s grassy hillsides—and nobody minded. “You could go wherever you wanted,” he says. “But those days are gone forever.”

The change began in the 1960s, he recalls, with the intrusion into private land of hard-to-evict campers, the breakup of large land tracts and new owners who put up gates and “No Trespassing” signs. With private property off-limits, it fell to regional, state and national parks to create access to public lands.

In recent years, converging desires—to traverse and explore the land, to get outdoor recreation and exercise, and to help fight climate change by reducing auto emissions—have driven a series of comprehensive trail projects throughout the Bay Area counties that open up possibilities for hikers, riders, commuters and tourists. Each of these projects is a story in vision, patience, long-term commitment and community cooperation. Together, they begin to outline a new way of thinking about our public lands and the possibilities of sustainable transportation.

 

Around the bay by ridge or shoreline

The Bay Area Ridge Trail, begun in 1987, will ultimately make a 550-mile ridge-top loop across the nine counties bordering the San Francisco Bay. With 310 miles complete, segments of the multi-use trail now pass across ridges in Napa, Sonoma and Marin as well as other Bay Area counties.

For those who prefer to stay at sea level, the San Francisco Bay Trail, in the works since 1988 and with 300 miles complete, will enable a cyclist or pedestrian to travel the 500 miles around the Bay on a predominantly Class One trail—which means paved and restricted to non-motorized/non-mechanized (except for wheelchair) travel. The Bay Trail is funded by the California Coastal Conservancy and by bonds approved by voters. “All the cities the Bay Trail runs through have supported it,” says Maureen Gaffney, Bay Trail planner with the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). “We connect to a lot of transit centers, job centers, a lot of different neighborhoods and ferries, and it’s just a place where people can get out, enjoy the San Francisco Bay and get some healthy exercise. It’s easily accessible, free transportation.”

 

If you build it, they will come

In Marin, an old and established plenitude of hiking trails ranges through the hills of public lands. Along those trails, the Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC) has, since 1998, been working with local municipalities to create the North-South Greenway, a safe and separate bicycle and pedestrian pathway system stretching from the Sausalito Ferry Terminal all the way to Northern Novato. To date, several stretches have been completed in Sausalito, Mill Valley, Corte Madera, Larkspur, San Rafael and Novato.

Gaffney, who is also board president of the MCBC, says a major motivation is the environmental ethic, which is strong in Marin. In large part through MCBC’s advocacy work, she says, several years ago the county was one of only four communities across the country to share a “really impressive” $100 million appropriation from the federal highway bill for a pilot program called the Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Program. The county’s $25 million share was used to study whether an investment of significant money in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure would create a “mode shift” from cars to nonmotorized means of transportation. The idea is, “If you build it, they will come,” says Gaffney.

The County of Marin is wrapping up some of the projects right now, including the Cal Park Tunnel and the Lincoln Hill Pathway, and when the new facilities are open, another survey will be made to see whether they’ve had an impact on the way people get around within the county. MCBC worked with multiple agencies for more than 10 years to create the $25 million Cal Park Tunnel (about half the cost was for the bicycle/pedestrian portion, and the remainder is being used to make the tunnel rail-ready for SMART, which is scheduled to begin operations in 2014). This reconstructed railway tunnel, scheduled to open for bikes and foot traffic in October, will allow SMART passenger trains, cyclists and pedestrians (with a full barrier between the trains and others) to go from Larkspur to San Rafael safely out of the way of cars.

 

A light at the end of the tunnel

MCBC is now working to reopen the Alto Tunnel, a second abandoned railroad tunnel, to let cyclists and pedestrians travel safely and conveniently between Mill Valley and Corte Madera. The County of Marin studied three routes between the cities: Two of them are steep and present significant dangers to nonmotorized travelers; only the Alto Tunnel is safe, flat and separated from cars. MCBC Advocacy and Outreach Coordinator Andy Peri says, “There’s widespread support to opening the Alto Tunnel, especially within Mill Valley and Corte Madera. While some neighbors do have concerns, we think we can find solutions that meet everyone’s needs. Concerns about noise, for example, could be resolved by building fences or planting vegetation.

“The most important next step for moving the Alto Tunnel project forward is to get engineers into the tunnel to conduct a geotechnical assessment. This will help determine accurate cost estimates, which we don’t currently have.”

This may seem like a long, slow process, but as Gaffney says, “It takes a lot of time and effort to make it all come together.”

 

A test case in coalition building

In April of this year, a groundbreaking ceremony in the town of Yountville officially launched a project that, a few years ago, people thought couldn’t be done. The Napa Valley Vine Trail now brings together local landowners, businesses, government agencies and committed citizens in service of an idea that—miraculous as it may seem—nobody dislikes: The Napa Vine Trail.

A few years ago, if someone said, “Come to Napa Valley—and you can leave your car at home!” one would have thought something was missing in the invitation (not to mention the mind of the person issuing it). Sure, there’s a Class Two bike lane on Silverado Trail, but by the number of homemade crosses, wreaths and other memorial shrines that proliferate up and down the trail, it’s clearly a dangerous road even for cars. So how would anyone get around the valley safely on a bike?

One answer materialized when Calistoga resident, Dieter Deiss, a retired engineer, approached George Goeggel, principal and partner of Auberge Resorts, with an idea for a bicycle trail that would span the entire Napa Valley. Both men had grown up in Europe and missed the culture in which bicycles and walking are thought of not just as forms of recreation, but as a natural mode of transportation. “I said, I think this is a brilliant idea and something I can believe in,” says Goeggel. “The real thought behind all this,” he says, “is to make a very special way to go from one place to another, by walking, jogging or with a baby carriage. So that all people who live here can virtually commute without a car.”

Goeggel and Diess then invited St. Helena landowner Andy Beckstoffer to lunch to see if he thought there was any possibility of selling the idea to other land owners.

“I said, ‘I think so, for sure,’” says Beckstoffer, “if you don’t take any vines out!’”

Beckstoffer didn’t think the concept would conflict with the Ag Preserve ordinance—something he defends as sacrosanct—and actually, it could enhance it. Having a bike trail would let people experience first-hand the “sense of place” in Napa Valley, and that, he says, would “protect our history.” The first group approached with the idea included Eliot Hurwitz, program manager at Napa County Transportation & Planning Agency, who was already working on a the idea of getting people out of their cars and onto bikes. He decided to commission a feasibility study.

That, in itself, was a major accomplishment. The study would cost $100,000—for a bike trail. But the group said, “What’s to lose?” and decided to ask each city in Napa Valley for $20,000. Deiss started with Calistoga and, amazingly enough, mayor Jack Gingles agreed. Energized, the group then went to St. Helena and met with another success. “And,” says Deiss, “the rest is history!”

But it could have remained history, had not a newcomer named Chuck McMinn entered the picture.

 

In Napa things happen at dinner

The study had been completed…and was just sitting there, Deiss says. Then, one night, serendipity. Deiss’s neighbor, Denis Sutro, president of the Land Trust of Napa County, happened to be sitting next to McMinn at a dinner, and they started talking about bicycling.

“They found out very quickly that, because of the traffic on Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail, it’s really dangerous [to bike] here,” says Deiss. “So Denis called me after the dinner, and said, ‘Dieter, I met a gentlemen you have to meet.’ I was in Chuck McMinn’s office the next day.”

“Chuck McMinn is the great savior of the whole deal,” says Beckstoffer, “because he provided leadership, enthusiasm, time and expertise. He’s a seasoned businessman and he’s used to leading a lot of people. So Chuck really got going on it.”

“Everyone thought they’d just do the study, put it on the shelf, and that would be that,” says McMinn, owner of Vineyard 29 and founder of Covad Communications Group in San Jose, “because they wouldn’t have the resources or the community involvement to take it forward. So we formed the Vine Trail Coalition in 2008 to take over and be a grassroots, nonprofit, public-private partnership that worked to build a hiking and biking trail from Calistoga to the Vallejo Ferry Terminal.”

The coalition now has 19 different local organizations represented on its board. “All the ag interest groups, all the economic interest groups, all the public agencies and all the environmental interest groups,” says McMinn, adding with pride, “no organization in Napa Valley is opposed to it.”

 

Everyone likes the Vine Trail

Achieving such unanimity is almost unheard of, but, as McMinn explains, the concept was irresistible. “Our guiding principle is, we’re not going to take any vineyard land out of use. All the use agreements are voluntary. So, if somebody doesn’t want to give us an easement, they don’t have to and we’ll find another route for the trail.”

 

Everyone will benefit. The Vine Trail will create added value for the visitors’ experience; it will enable locals and tourists to traverse the valley, visit stores and restaurants, hop on buses and get healthy exercise—all on a safe and separate track away from automobiles and without adding to the carbon footprint. Parts of the trail are already in place. “Of the 46.4 miles between Calistoga and the Vallejo Ferry Terminal,” says McMinn, “7.5 miles are completed or under construction. There’s a 1.5-mile piece in the city of Calistoga; there’s a 3-mile piece in the city of Napa; there’s another 1.5 miles in Kennedy Park, south of Napa. So there are bits and pieces already. Nothing to connect them together yet—that’s the goal.”

For Eliot Hurwitz, the Vine Trail will be the standard bearer for a valley-wide bicycle network and will help bicycling to become an increasingly mainstream mode of transportation in Napa County in the coming decades.

Deiss is thrilled. “I’m very impatient and I like to enact things,” he says. “We have so many plans in life, but my focus has been to actually make the changes happen. To convert a concept into reality is my passion.”

McMinn is the perfect facilitator. “One of the things I love to do is start things up,” he says. “I’ve been doing high-tech startups for 25 years in Silicon Valley. I came up here and did a startup in the wine business—my wife and I own Vineyard 29—and so this was a familiar challenge; it’s another startup. But it’s not just any startup, it’s a legacy startup. It’s a startup that’s going to leave a legacy for everyone in this valley for everybody who’s connected to it. And everybody gets it.”

Are we there yet?

As for when it’ll all be done, the advice Maureen Gaffney offers about the San Francisco Bay Trail applies to the Vine Trail and all the others in process: “If you’re patient, and you keep supporting it, it actually happens!”

“I tell people it’ll take 10 years,” says McMinn. “We’re going to raise 20 percent of the money philanthropically. But we’re still dependent on the other 80 percent coming from federal or state transportation funds, or Safe Routes to School funds and so forth, and we need $44 million to build the rest of this trail.”

So, he says, it will all depend on how quickly the project can secure state and federal support. And, of course, local support. “We’d love to have people become members of the Vine Trail,” he says, and directs people to the new website, www.vinetrail.org, where they can join, become active and also donate.

 

Summiting Sonoma Mountain

In a transportation breakthrough of the hiking variety, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District has been working with local landowners, the Coastal Conservancy, Regional County parks, the Conservation Corps North Bay and the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council to create a trail that would let walkers and hikers go from Bennett Valley to Jack London State Park, with a link connecting to the Bay Area Ridge Trail. “What I love about this trail,” says Bill Keene, general manager of the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, “is that it brings together the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, the Coastal Conservancy and the district and state parks. We have four great partners. And it’s a huge link in the Bay Area Ridge Trail with incredible views from many, many different points along its course.”

One of the goals of its planners is to have portions of the trail accessible to all—and that’s not easy, given the complex topography. “We can provide universal access to a certain point,” says Natural Resources Planner Kim Batchelder. “But it can become so damaging to the environment—say constructing wheelchair access—that you run into major environmental issues. So we have to be careful about that balance.”

“It’s a wildlife corridor,” says Community Affairs Manager Peggy Flynn. “So we want to make sure we’re not changing the natural flow of things.”

Pigs, for example.

One of the partners in the project is the Sonoma State University Fairfield Osborn Preserve, a research facility where students and professors look into things like sudden oak death, oak woodland ecology and environmental education. They wanted to make sure the project would provide fencing to keep wild pigs from coming in and digging up the native species they’re trying to preserve. “Jack London Park is a habitat for the wild pigs, which are really damaging to any environment,” says Batchelder. “So we’ll respect the Preserve’s need for pig-resistant fencing without creating a fortress situation, where no animals can flow in and out.” He explains that the pig-resistant fencing would have loose mesh at the bottom that would deter pigs, but let other little mammals get through. He admits that during the five years he’s worked on the project, he’s never seen any pigs. Nevertheless, he’ll keep them out. “Our responsibility would be establishing a gate so horses and hikers can get through, but not pigs.

“We don’t anticipate lining it all with fencing,” explains Batchelder. “We want to be strategic and protect livestock by keeping people on the trail. And if the Fairfield Osborn Preserve wants good fencing, we can accommodate that.”

We can accommodate

Bottom line, this is the attitude that’s building success in all these projects, bringing together businesses, tourists, landowners, commuters and locals just out for fun. Whether the task is connecting walking trails through wild land or bike paths from city to city, local counties are changing the way they look at transportation. As a result, excitement is building that the vision of clean, healthy, sustainable transportation and outdoor recreation in our beautiful counties can actually become reality.

“There’s no one solution,” says Hurwitz, “it has to be everything we can think of.” Each in its own way, Napa, Sonoma and Marin are laying ground to become transportation and recreation models for the future.

The beauty of all these trails is that they’re there for the public to access and enjoy. For maps and information about the Bay Trail, visit http://baytrail.abag.ca.gov. For Bay Ridge Trail maps, visit www.ridgetrail.org. For Marin County bike route maps, visit Marin Bicycle Coalition’s website at www.marinbike.org. For a Sonoma County Agriculture and Open Space recreation map, visit www.sonomaopenspace.org.