The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

City approves Bay Trail

By Steve Enders

Hikers and bikers on the San Francisco Bay Trail will soon be able to proceed through Sunnyvale, thanks to the City Council's actions last Tuesday night.

The council unanimously agreed to go ahead with plans to expand the trail by 2.75 miles through Sunnyvale. A majority of Sunnyvale's trail will run through Baylands Park.

When finished, the 420-mile path will encircle San Francisco Bay and will pass through several cities, including Alameda, Mountain View, San Rafael, South San Francisco and Oakland. Currently, it is nearly half complete.

The Association of Bay Area Governments is the organizing force behind the project. It collects and distributes the federal, state and private funds that are financing the project.

Sunnyvale recently received a $69,700 grant from ABAG to help finance its portion of the trail.

Councilmember Julia Miller is an ardent supporter of the trail. She said the next step is to get in contact with officials at NASA and Lockheed, whose land is needed to connect the Sunnyvale portion of the trail to Mountain View. This connection would result in an unbroken trail stretching from Alviso to Palo Alto.

Lockheed and NASA land separates the Baylands Park trail from the Shoreline Trail in Mountain View. In order to bring the two trails together, Lockheed and NASA must agree to let ABAG use a portion of their land.

"To get [Lockheed and NASA] to agree will be a big challenge," Miller said. "We're hoping that [Lockheed's CEO] will assist the city in getting this through. We've heard he's a community-oriented guy, and this would be good publicity for Lockheed."

NASA recently gave a corner of its land away as an easement for the trail but still has other land it may share with the public.

In the past, NASA officials have said they're using the easement as a blueprint to study the feasibility of sharing even more land in the future.

Lockheed officials have expressed interest in the project, but haven't given Miller and the city any assurances that they will participate in the trail's construction. Representatives from Lockheed were not available for comment at press time.

The trail will run north from Caribbean Drive out to the bay, and east across the Guadalupe Slough, parallel to Highway 237. It will then turn south toward the highway, up the banks of Calabazas Creek near Santa Clara.

The city is expected to spend $27,000 per year, which will come fom its open-space budget, to maintain the trail. It will provide amenities such as benches, signs, fencing and trash cans. The city is also taking on the responsibility of trail-user safety.

Not everyone is as excited as the city is about the trail, though.

Tom Espersen, a member of the Sunnyvale chapter of Save Our South Bay Wetlands, said the encroachment of the trail onto fragile wetland habitat spells bad news. Stretches of the trail, including the portions in Sunnyvale, will brush up against these marshes.

"It cannot go through sensitive wildlife habitat where wildlife and animal and bird communities live in the salt marshes. Any negative impact from bridges or going through endangered species or wildlife habitat is wrong," Espersen said.

He said that he and his group already traverse the levees in Sunnyvale near the bay's shores to watch birds and other animals, so a trail wouldn't be helpful to him or other wildlife watchers.

"There's a misconception that hikers are environmentalists," Espersen said. "That's not the case. Some of them just want a trail, and they don't care where it goes or what it crosses. They just want to hike."

Robert Walker, director of Sunnyvale's parks and recreation department, said that the trail through Sunnyvale will mostly be built on existing levees.

"I don't think it will encroach on any wildlife habitat. That certainly is not our intent," Walker said, adding that a bridge will be needed over at least one waterway, but he doesn't think it will invade sensitive habitat.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, March 4, 1998.
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