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the urban, eastern interior of the bay. Cox
estimates that the Bayshore Bikeway is a
little more than half complete, with current
work under way on a 1.7-mile stretch in
Chula Vista and another 2.8-mile stretch in
National City.
Starting in the 1980s with funds
from the California Department of
Transportation (CalTrans), development of
the bikeway has been funded by an amal-
gam of local, state and federal transporta-
tion grants, and a 40-year bond initiative
backed by a half-cent county sales tax.
“We’re a self-help county here in San
Diego, and we hope to leverage that bond
so that we can complete the work early and
service the debt early,” Cox says. “But I
should add that we’ve also benefited greatly
from the likes of the California Coastal
Conservancy, which recently granted us
$2.5 million to get one of our current bike-
way stretches under way.”
Elaborating on the self-help notion, Cox
adds that, when a section of the Bayshore
Bikeway is finished, the city through
which it runs takes responsibility for its
maintenance.
“Once the bikeway is completed, I
think you’ll find a significant mode shift,
getting people out of their cars and traf-
fic and riding bicycles—a much healthier
way to commute,” Cox says. “The bike-
way is also forming a sort of urban spine
that’s going to unite our region’s parks
and trail systems with the California
Coastal Trail, the California Riding and
Hiking Trail and eventually the Pacific
Crest Trail. It’ll encourage more people to
[explore great spaces off
the beaten path].”
San Francisco Bay and
Beyond
In the San Francisco
Bay Area, the East Bay
Regional Park District’s
trail program manager,
JimTownsend, is spearheading the Green
Transportation Initiative.
“We’re linking buses, trains and Bay
Area Rapid Transit [BART] with schools,
consumer centers and residential districts,”
Townsend says. “The aim, of course, is
to get people to leave their cars in their
garage—where cars belong—and use our
trail system as a non-motorized, green trans-
portation network to access [mass transit].”
Townsend says that, within Alameda
and Contra Costa counties alone, there are
more than 1,200 miles of trails, of which
about 175 miles are paved and already pro-
vide access to non-motorized transportation
alternatives. A number of these trails follow
existing or former rail corridors, including
the Iron Horse Regional Trail, a National
MillenniumTrail.
Spreading TheirWings
To show the profound impact trails and parks can have on a community in need, some-
times a simple anecdote is best. Amigos de los Rios founder Claire Robinson shares this
story of how Los Angeles County’s Emerald Necklace of parks and greenways gave a few
kids some butterflies:
“At one of our parks projects on the Rio Hondo, we went in and asked local children
what kind of play area they would like, thinking they’d ask for monkey bars, swing sets
and slides. Instead, to the last one, they said what they wanted was a place where real,
live butterflies and real, live birds would come. They had seen pictures of them in books,
but they wanted their park to be a place where butterflies and birds could be
seen
. They were telling us, ‘Hey, think about the bigger picture and a better
balance of nature.’ So, in the end, we built butterfly habitat with a trail
around the edge and a butterfly-themed play area. After it was done,
one of the kids said, ‘We might never go to Disneyland, but this is our
version.’We called the area Gibson-Mariposa Park—Gibson for the
street, and Mariposa, the Spanish word for butterfly.”
Many of the greater region’s trail systems
are linked by stretches of the San Francisco
Bay Trail and the Bay Area Ridge Trail,
both of which connect to another relatively
new trail initiative and mass transportation
endeavor, the Napa Valley Vine Trail.
The Vine Trail—planned as a 10-foot-
wide, 44-mile, Class I bike and pedes-
trian pathway through the heart of Napa
Valley—was conceived by entrepreneur
Chuck McMinn, who owns and operates
Napa’s Vineyard 29 winery.
“I’m not an avid biker,” McMinn says.
“But my wife and I love to rent bikes
whenever we travel, and when we first
moved to Napa, I couldn’t understand why
there was no bike trail here. A few years
ago I posed the question to the vintners
association, and they thought it was a
great idea. Then I went to the Land Trust
of Napa County, and they also thought it
was a great idea. Together, they eventually
provided the seed money for what is now
a nonprofit organization called the Napa
Valley Vine Trail Coalition.”
The coalition comprises more than 27
diverse organizations, from wine interest
groups to the California Highway Patrol,
the Sierra Club and the Clif Bar Family
Foundation. What makes it so different
from other bikeway support organizations,
though, is that huge portions of the funding
Courtesy of Steven Vance/SANDAG
When fully completed, the Bayshore Bikeway
will stretch 24 miles around San Diego Bay;
(inset) Supervisor Greg Cox celebrates a ribbon
cutting for a trail section through San Diego
Bay Wildlife Refuge, connecting Chula Vista to
Imperial Beach.