City Beat
SJ council boosts its trail project plan May 30
Councilman Ken Yeager's proposal to improve system
By George Moore
The San Jose City Council took action at its May 30 meeting and gave a major boost to trail projects that eventually will help link existing trails in the greater San Jose area. The council approved a joint-use agreement between San Jose and the Santa Clara Water District defining responsibilities for trail improvement projects along the Los Gatos Creek and Upper Guadalupe Creek. The council also approved an overall plan for interim trails and discussed the hiring of a trail's coordinator in June.
District 6 City Councilman Ken Yeager has been working on trail projects since joining the council in November 2000.
"Things are happening at a faster pace than they have in the past 10 years," said Yeager. "It's really been a very exciting two weeks."
The plan is to link trails from Lake Almaden and Lexington Reservoir through downtown San Jose and all the way to Alviso. Trail enthusiasts and alternative commuters will travel over much of the greater San Jose are without using surface streets.
Los Gatos Creek Trail becomes Guadalupe River Trail when they join at the Arena Green area in San Jose--before continuing on to Alviso.
Todd Rosenburger, longtime resident of Willow Glen, said he often uses the Los Gatos Creek Trail riding his mountain bike to Lexington Reservoir. He said he enjoys the trails that are currently in place, but may venture to new riding areas once the trails are linked.
Dave Mitchell, San Jose City parks planning manager, said the department has been working on trails and it has now come into the light of council that trails are a major important item and needs more focus.
"The city's ultimate goal is to try and make those trail connections," said Mitchell. "Our work is somewhat predicated on the flood control district doing their improvements and us following behind them."
Mitchell said when the department was broken up years ago the trails were one of the things that fell through the cracks.
"What council is saying now is that we have this trail system somewhat in place and we want to put some effort into completing it," said Mitchell.
Yeager said the city has never had a joint-use agreement with the water district until now.
"This is a big step forward," said Yeager. "There are many levees and waterways that go out to Alviso that are owned by the water district. People have been using some of them as trails, but they sort of do it illegally."
The agreement would allow legal access to all of these trails--unlocking gates in certain areas--and they would be maintained by the city.
Mitchell said the joint-use agreement will affect the permanent trails along the creek corridors--the interim trails will be near streets somewhat following the creeks.
One of Yeager's key concerns is having an interim trail system in place while permanent projects are being completed.
"We're working on interim trails in places we know that [the permanent trails] are going to take 10 or more years to complete," said Yeager. "Some that are planned along the Guadalupe River are part of flood control projects that might take 20 years."
Mitchell said the flood control improvements to the Guadalupe River are between Highway's 280 and 85.
Council approved the development of an interim trail segment between Blossom Hill Road and Chynoweth Avenue. Yeager said he was especially pleased to see city staff incorporate his direction to include an interim route that connects this portion of the trail to the Highway 87 Bikeway route while the South Guadalupe River Trail project is completed.
Yeager added that another project that was supported was for the planning and development of a pedestrian/bicycle bridge over Gregory Street, which includes related trail improvements along Los Gatos Creek. The bridge will connect Gregory Street to Lonus Court, and Yeager said it would make it much easier for residents to recreation in the area with a trail at that location.
Yeager enjoys jogging and occasionally bicycling on area trails and was involved before becoming a council member.
"I was always aware that we needed a better trail system to make San Jose a truly great city," said Yeager.
He got to work immediately as a council member--collecting information and status reports concerning what was needed and where. Once he had all the information he needed, last September he mapped out a strategy on how to accomplish it.
Yeager said he recently learned from discussions with the director of Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services Department that the city would be hiring a trail's coordinator whose sole responsibility would be to make progress on the trail projects. He said many have long advocated for the hiring of a coordinator, and said it is hard to overstate its significance to helping complete the trail projects.
"We're going to be approving a position for someone to do nothing but the trails," Yeager said. "We've never had that. And we've also got approval for the master plan for the Guadalupe River Parks."
Mitchell said hiring a trail's coordinator would obviously be a major step in helping to complete the trail systems. He added that the city already has a bicycle coordinator in the transportation department.
"Between our trail's coordinator and the bicycle coordinator, we're going to have two trail gurus in the city," said Mitchell.
According to Mitchell, the parks department is working with the bicycle coordinator to come up with on-street alignments to locate trails to make the connection points.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
