Sound off about anything and everything on the weekly open forum.
18 Comments
I had an open afternoon yesterday, so I decided to explore the improved Guadalupe River Trail underpasses from downtown to Alviso on my mtn bike. This was always a fun bike ride before—even when you had to walk your bike under 101 and Airport Skyway in the mud—but now it’s a smooth, straight-shot ride.
While the visual counterpoint which characteries the ride—riparian corridor on one side, airport and No. 1st Street parking lots on the other—remains intriguing, the real reward is the out-of-time splendor and stunning views from Alviso at the Marina County Park. Simply put, there are no better train watching places in the bay area, as the shimmering Capitol Corridors come sliding out of the low salt ponds into view, past the leaning Victorians and abandoned yacht clubs.
The views up Mission Peak and Diablo Range are unimpeded; the herons circle noisily, and the lazy afternoon unfolds in empty streets where the soft sound of ranchera music sneaks out of open windows.
This bike trail, which runs right through the center of a huge city, is an urban treasure, as is the solitary appeal of Alviso’s bayside promenade. About 10 miles each way on nicely-packed gravel levee, with some paved parts at underpasses. 1 hour each way. Highly recommened.
I have a bone to pick with the Mercury News. It has to do with the publication of hate speech and racist rants in the public comments section that accompanies on-line news articles.
The concept of public comments is a good one: give people the opportunity to share their thoughts or add additional information about a news article. But something seems to get lost between concept and execution. The result is the comments section is frequently a soapbox for haters.
Through it’s daily postings of the racist comments by a handful of bloggers the Mercury News has, perhaps unwittingly, become the leading purveyor of racial hatred in San Jose.
In particular any time there is an article about immigration, Little Saigon or anything else that touches on race and diversity the Merc publishes the comments of people who cannot make their points without racist insults. We are not talking about the give and take of informed debate. This is flat out hate speech right out of the KKK play book.
The result is the Merc’s comments section has devolved into a completely worthless cesspool that likely drives away many people who might otherwise like to share more enlightened viewpoints.
This week’s comments on the Little Saigon controversy were particularly offensive. I would cite examples but I doubt that they would get past the SJI editor, nor should they.
There is apparently no attempt to filter out the trash before publication. From what I gather the Merc only reviews a submission if somebody complains after it has already posted.
To be fair some of the worst offenders are removed, eventually. But I can’t help but wonder why the Merc only exercises editorial discretion after the fact. Do they not feel a responsibility for what is published on their web site?
This is not a free speech issue. Every time the Merc publishes a newspaper article it makes a series of decisions regarding the content of the article, it’s headline, it’s placement in the newspaper, etc. It can, and does, reject material that is inappropriate for publication. But for some reason the Merc seems unwilling to extend basic editorial controls to it’s web site.
We all know the Merc has had layoffs and budget cuts but this is not a difficult or expensive problem to solve. The question is: does the Merc have the will to solve it?
I don’t believe the people at the Merc are racist, just lazy and perhaps unable to grasp the concepts of how to incorporate new media into an old media environment. The result is an embarrassment to the Merc and a huge disservice to our community.
I know this isn’t Mr. VZ’s BART thread, but I wanted to use the R&R to counter a ridiculous argument some have been making oppossing BART to SJ. Only “5%” of SJ citizens will use BART, and most of the riders will be coming from the East Bay…they should be paying for it, blah blah blah. Has anyone ever looked at a current map of the BART system? 4 lines (3 original) sending thousands of workers and visitors into San Francisco daily. And most of those workers/visitors originate from the East Bay! I would say BART has done wonders for SF, especially the Market St./downtown area. The same thing could happen for our downtown if BART becomes a reality.
Why does the Mayor of San Jose, along with the city council, take the entire month of July off with all the pressing issues?
Why is the United States Congress going to take the month of August and into September off, while us working suckers are paying $5 a gallon for gas with no solutions on the horizon?
Our tax dollars hard at work. We all really need to remember this next election.
you describe the trail as if it were a passage betwixt the narrowing cliffs and far-off peaks of the pyrenees, or something as beautiful and exotic.
and to think that many of us blindly drive above and beside it everyday and never think to do more than take a mundane trip to santana row or to a half-baked movie in the middle of a lovely day like today.
thank you for providing my imagination a lovely trip up our little valley. we would be blessed if such a visionary leader were to guide our city into appreciating the simpler things we already haveavailable to us than to yearn to destroy and build things to create an artificial appreciation.
The Guadalupe River Trail is indeed one of our little known gems. I think I’ve been on just about all of it at one time or another. Around Tasman the trail connects with Ulistac Natural Area which is a nice place to visit. More people should know about it.
Supposedly this trail will be connected to the Los Gatos Creek trail which currently runs from Vasona to Meridian near Fruitdale. That is also a very nice trail, and both will be the better for being connected. A piece of the middle bit has been done and when they finish with the development on Auzerais, there should be another piece added. According to the Parks website this piece will open to San Carlos this year.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to connect this part up through Arena Green as there is already a path most of the way through, constructed by persons unknown.
The problem is the gap between Meridian and Lincoln. There doesn’t seem to be a plan for that. The trouble is that people’s backyards run right down to the creek.
The next thing to do is to connect it to the former Western Pacific tracks through Willow Glen as part of a larger trail network.
This mostly looks pretty good although I don’t think it’s all funded yet.
The trail at Alviso is also slated to join up with the San Francisco Bay Trail that will eventually encircle the bay with 500 miles of trail. Just in the last few days I walked a couple of sections of this, from Fort Mason to the Golden Gate Bridge, and from AT&T Park along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building. One very natural, one very urban, but both enjoyable in their own way. The many small historical displays along the Embarcadero were very nicely done—that’s an idea that we could well imitate here.
I would like to point out to Rose Garden Dad that our San Jose trails are not “bike trails”. They are recreation trails that are used by walkers, runners, people with dogs, baby strollers, etc., as well as cyclists.
I’ve sometimes encountered problems with aggressive bicyclists who don’t signal or slow for pedestrians. In Germany the law requires all bicycles to have bells that must be rung when overtaking a pedestrian. I’m not saying we should do that here, but remember that bicycle/pedestrian accidents can be fatal. With a little courtesy all around, we can all enjoy these trails safely.
I just checked out the links from Train Watcher in Alviso and enjoyed the train photos. Not only are the trails in Alviso good for viewing trains and, of course, birds (since it’s a bird sanctuary), but here and there one can find little art installations made of wood, like miniature Stonehenges.
I once asked the rangers if they knew anything about these, but I guess when they go out on the trails they are in a Jeep looking for—I suppose—dead bodies or illegal trash dumping or stuff like that. They don’t slow down for guerrilla art.
I appreciate that someone sneaks out there and adds a little tasteful adornment to the stark natural beauty of the place.
Sucked the wind out of me like a breeze from a pepper farm. Ran away with small feet pattering on hard pan beneath tangled veins of branches and leafs. Happiness skipped and hobbled through brush and sage and swollen streams, moving swiftly into the distance each time I tried to approach it. It leaped over felled fences and through pastures of grazing cows. And then I saw you, smiling pretty with a mink look and narrow eyes of mischief. Paint brushes of sundried width and bristles of boar, stiffened from dried-out oils sopped and layered with every vibrant color of God’s grand earth, each waiting its turn patiently along the thin rail of your easel, begging for a chance to be handled by your tender fingers in a slight grasp and a steady sweep across your rumpled canvas spread taut, and aching to be set free and hung loosely like cotton underthings across a warmed line beneath the hot sun. How I tried to ignore you. How I wished I was the very brush that was in your clasp, your fingers tethered across my waist just slightly, guiding me with calm, untrembling certainty. How I tried to believe it was the liquor that turned my head upwards to the sky to search for the angels harking out from above the cows and green meadows. Surely, they had sent you to tell me to buck up and drop the bottle, now didn’t they?
Now, I ain’t one to believe in that type of stuff. Been in this valley for a score now, if not in reality, at least in my sentiments. We all know the ghosts of groves that linger where houses and buildings now stand. Trees carry spirits, too, and all the things that happened near these trees also tend to float about like a lazy fog none to happy to dissipate at the sun’s first rays. But how else am I to feel?
And so when I came upon you sitting quietly minding your self, your eyes cast afar trying to capture the linear angles of this building and that, your thumb up in the air like so as if you were fixing to hitch a ride along the old Monterey road, well, I had to start wondering where the angels were since nothing that pretty done set itself in this little valley since the big storm of many years ago when the hillsides were suddenly blazing green following days and nights of rain, and upon the green burst a golden carpet of poppies far as the eye can see. And so that’s what I thought about when I saw you settin’ there all by your lonesome self, with brushes splayed about you on the easel and your thumb steady up in the air capturing perception and depth—you were like one lovely little poppy sprung up in golden glory, the offspring of those thousands if not millions from years ago that set the hills aglow to the east when the sun laid low on its last glance at us before heading off to light up another place of this good world and bring mornings for those whose nights I hope were as comforting and loving as I felt when I saw you there.
Now I shoulda approached you. I kick myself now. And it won’t be the first time I felt I oughta lay a boot up my behind for my shyness, but out here among the groves of apricots and with the hum of the bees going about the business of bees, I figured angels and those sent down from them ought not to be disturbed. It’s a principle of life that God’s gifts are to be admired unsullied by the sinfilled hands of man, and mine ain’t exactly clean from my meanderings about the earth. And so I chose to turn and keep to my heart’s memory your image out there upon the landscape, your mind turned upon the canvas, your hand pausing in the air and a drying canvas trembling at the corners of the frame.
I knew I would sleep well that night because happiness does that to folks like me who’ve been in the world long enough to see it spin a hundred times on its own axle and felt the wear of it as it takes its inevitable slow path around the sun, too.
It’s not often a happiness like that is captured and the day I saw you out there was a rare day of happiness indeed.
#2: I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have done two things in response to the Merc’s out of control comments section, and suggest you do the same. First, stop reading the comments. What little value there is in there is overwhelmed by the racist rhetoric. Second, send a message expressing your disgust to Barbara Marshman ([email protected]). I’m not to the point of cancelling my subscription to the Merc, although it’s getting thin enough that it’s becoming irrelevant.
I’m a frequent visitor to Alviso, primarily because I love the food at Maria Elena’s (1st & Gold). But I have discovered the serenity of walking or riding the levies (start at the recently revamped Alviso Marina). There is also the beautiful Don Edwards SF Bay Nat’l Wildlife Refuge. For the more adventurous, enjoy a trek out the Drawbridge.
Back in the 80s & 90s when I was running a lot, I took the Guadalupe levee “trail” in the summer months on weekends for training runs. The trail wasn’t developed between Airport Blvd. & the other siide of 101, but in the dry months it was negotiable. The few fences and gates that caused barriers were breached by the homeless, so we actually could go all the way to Alviso, but not as easily as today.
I often wondered why all the levees along creeks in SC Valley were locked off with gates. They are great resources for running or biking without having to deal with auto traffic. I concluded that the various city attorneys, county counsel, and the water district’s lawyers decided that if a kid drowned or a lone female jogger were raped while using the levess to jog or ride bikes, then all those jurisdictions would be named as defendants in lawsuits.
The legislature could easily remedy that problem by passing legislation granting immunity to the various governmental entities, making the use of the levees/trails to jog or bike at one’s own risk.
#7 opined:“The problem is the gap between Meridian and Lincoln. There doesn’t seem to be a plan for that. The trouble is that people’s backyards run right down to the creek.” It’s actually more difficult than that—the property lines in that section go to the middle of LG Creek. The land to build the trail along the creek in that section could only be obtained by eminent domain.
10 MHz I couldn’t agree with you more about the “use” of a multi-use trail.
Walkers, hikers, please stay no more then two wide, I would hate to run into you on my bike when there is 10 of you 4 wide across the entire trail around a blind turn.
A trail along Seattle’s waterfront, which I always caught @ Pike St. Market, is split in two—one for walkers/joggers, the other for bicyclists/skaters.
The trail is liberally stenciled with signs saying which is which. They read :All wheels” and “All heels”.
Why can’t we do that with our trails? One side of the river/creek for “heels” and the other side for “wheels”.
Sorry for late reply to Guad Creek Trail discussion, been offline up at Scout Camp with my 11-year old.
* Train Watch photos—thanks for the gleaming photos those are glorious. So is it ACE, Capitol Corridor, Coast Starlite, and freight that use that line?
* da mayor: oooh: thanks for the Kerouacian prose, especially like that ‘ghost of groves’ imagery.
* 10 mhz: where’s the guerilla art out by marina, would love to see it. And you are right of course re: cyclists, bells, and ped courtesy
* all re: connecting the trail: back in the day, there was a movement to have a Cherry St. bike bridge be part of the trail connection,which would improve I think the Lincoln-Meridian gap—is that still a possibility? If not, perhaps we could just add a bike lane on Lincoln up to Willow (which has a nice bike lane) and connect up with the trail at Willow and Leigh.
#13.You may well be right about the lawyers, but surely recreation trails aren’t any different from any other kind of park in this respect. I just put it down to the Army Corps of Engineers mindset of “encase it in concrete and hide it”. You probably recall back when the Guadalupe flood control project began, there was quite a bit of a ruckus about this, and we should thank the people who kept the pressure on so we have the nice result that we have today.
I also walked the levees back in the 80s, and I recall a lot of other people being out too, so clearly there was a demand for it. The only problem back then was if you got caught in the rain, your feet would end up enclosed in two big balls of our finest local adobe mud.
I was under the impression that waterways couldn’t be privately owned in California, but in any case the problem is there is no room for a trail along the creek. There are places in SJ where you can see that pieces of front yards were taken for widening streets, presumably by eminent domain, back in the day. But it wouldn’t be popular today. Better probably to detour the trail through the streets. But as yet I haven’t seen any plan for this.
#14. I agree, walkers should show consideration for bikers and vice versa. Walking four wide seems a bit impractical but there are always a few idiots to be found.
I had an open afternoon yesterday, so I decided to explore the improved Guadalupe River Trail underpasses from downtown to Alviso on my mtn bike. This was always a fun bike ride before—even when you had to walk your bike under 101 and Airport Skyway in the mud—but now it’s a smooth, straight-shot ride.
While the visual counterpoint which characteries the ride—riparian corridor on one side, airport and No. 1st Street parking lots on the other—remains intriguing, the real reward is the out-of-time splendor and stunning views from Alviso at the Marina County Park. Simply put, there are no better train watching places in the bay area, as the shimmering Capitol Corridors come sliding out of the low salt ponds into view, past the leaning Victorians and abandoned yacht clubs.
The views up Mission Peak and Diablo Range are unimpeded; the herons circle noisily, and the lazy afternoon unfolds in empty streets where the soft sound of ranchera music sneaks out of open windows.
This bike trail, which runs right through the center of a huge city, is an urban treasure, as is the solitary appeal of Alviso’s bayside promenade. About 10 miles each way on nicely-packed gravel levee, with some paved parts at underpasses. 1 hour each way. Highly recommened.
I have a bone to pick with the Mercury News. It has to do with the publication of hate speech and racist rants in the public comments section that accompanies on-line news articles.
The concept of public comments is a good one: give people the opportunity to share their thoughts or add additional information about a news article. But something seems to get lost between concept and execution. The result is the comments section is frequently a soapbox for haters.
Through it’s daily postings of the racist comments by a handful of bloggers the Mercury News has, perhaps unwittingly, become the leading purveyor of racial hatred in San Jose.
In particular any time there is an article about immigration, Little Saigon or anything else that touches on race and diversity the Merc publishes the comments of people who cannot make their points without racist insults. We are not talking about the give and take of informed debate. This is flat out hate speech right out of the KKK play book.
The result is the Merc’s comments section has devolved into a completely worthless cesspool that likely drives away many people who might otherwise like to share more enlightened viewpoints.
This week’s comments on the Little Saigon controversy were particularly offensive. I would cite examples but I doubt that they would get past the SJI editor, nor should they.
There is apparently no attempt to filter out the trash before publication. From what I gather the Merc only reviews a submission if somebody complains after it has already posted.
To be fair some of the worst offenders are removed, eventually. But I can’t help but wonder why the Merc only exercises editorial discretion after the fact. Do they not feel a responsibility for what is published on their web site?
This is not a free speech issue. Every time the Merc publishes a newspaper article it makes a series of decisions regarding the content of the article, it’s headline, it’s placement in the newspaper, etc. It can, and does, reject material that is inappropriate for publication. But for some reason the Merc seems unwilling to extend basic editorial controls to it’s web site.
We all know the Merc has had layoffs and budget cuts but this is not a difficult or expensive problem to solve. The question is: does the Merc have the will to solve it?
I don’t believe the people at the Merc are racist, just lazy and perhaps unable to grasp the concepts of how to incorporate new media into an old media environment. The result is an embarrassment to the Merc and a huge disservice to our community.
I know this isn’t Mr. VZ’s BART thread, but I wanted to use the R&R to counter a ridiculous argument some have been making oppossing BART to SJ. Only “5%” of SJ citizens will use BART, and most of the riders will be coming from the East Bay…they should be paying for it, blah blah blah. Has anyone ever looked at a current map of the BART system? 4 lines (3 original) sending thousands of workers and visitors into San Francisco daily. And most of those workers/visitors originate from the East Bay! I would say BART has done wonders for SF, especially the Market St./downtown area. The same thing could happen for our downtown if BART becomes a reality.
Why does the Mayor of San Jose, along with the city council, take the entire month of July off with all the pressing issues?
Why is the United States Congress going to take the month of August and into September off, while us working suckers are paying $5 a gallon for gas with no solutions on the horizon?
Our tax dollars hard at work. We all really need to remember this next election.
You’re right about the train watching in Alviso. See
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=243703
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=239668
mr. rose garden dad:
you describe the trail as if it were a passage betwixt the narrowing cliffs and far-off peaks of the pyrenees, or something as beautiful and exotic.
and to think that many of us blindly drive above and beside it everyday and never think to do more than take a mundane trip to santana row or to a half-baked movie in the middle of a lovely day like today.
thank you for providing my imagination a lovely trip up our little valley. we would be blessed if such a visionary leader were to guide our city into appreciating the simpler things we already haveavailable to us than to yearn to destroy and build things to create an artificial appreciation.
Tony D, Jack started the BART thread because people were getting tired of BART posts on “Rants & Raves.” [I was one of the guilty parties]
I have responded to your comments comments there:
http://www.sanjoseinside.com/sji/blog/entries/will_we_ever_have_bart/
The Guadalupe River Trail is indeed one of our little known gems. I think I’ve been on just about all of it at one time or another. Around Tasman the trail connects with Ulistac Natural Area which is a nice place to visit. More people should know about it.
Supposedly this trail will be connected to the Los Gatos Creek trail which currently runs from Vasona to Meridian near Fruitdale. That is also a very nice trail, and both will be the better for being connected. A piece of the middle bit has been done and when they finish with the development on Auzerais, there should be another piece added. According to the Parks website this piece will open to San Carlos this year.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to connect this part up through Arena Green as there is already a path most of the way through, constructed by persons unknown.
The problem is the gap between Meridian and Lincoln. There doesn’t seem to be a plan for that. The trouble is that people’s backyards run right down to the creek.
The next thing to do is to connect it to the former Western Pacific tracks through Willow Glen as part of a larger trail network.
Here’s a map of the planned trails:
http://www.sjparks.org/Trails/documents/CityTrailsMap_All.pdf (it’s a couple of years old)
This mostly looks pretty good although I don’t think it’s all funded yet.
The trail at Alviso is also slated to join up with the San Francisco Bay Trail that will eventually encircle the bay with 500 miles of trail. Just in the last few days I walked a couple of sections of this, from Fort Mason to the Golden Gate Bridge, and from AT&T Park along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building. One very natural, one very urban, but both enjoyable in their own way. The many small historical displays along the Embarcadero were very nicely done—that’s an idea that we could well imitate here.
I would like to point out to Rose Garden Dad that our San Jose trails are not “bike trails”. They are recreation trails that are used by walkers, runners, people with dogs, baby strollers, etc., as well as cyclists.
I’ve sometimes encountered problems with aggressive bicyclists who don’t signal or slow for pedestrians. In Germany the law requires all bicycles to have bells that must be rung when overtaking a pedestrian. I’m not saying we should do that here, but remember that bicycle/pedestrian accidents can be fatal. With a little courtesy all around, we can all enjoy these trails safely.
I just checked out the links from Train Watcher in Alviso and enjoyed the train photos. Not only are the trails in Alviso good for viewing trains and, of course, birds (since it’s a bird sanctuary), but here and there one can find little art installations made of wood, like miniature Stonehenges.
I once asked the rangers if they knew anything about these, but I guess when they go out on the trails they are in a Jeep looking for—I suppose—dead bodies or illegal trash dumping or stuff like that. They don’t slow down for guerrilla art.
I appreciate that someone sneaks out there and adds a little tasteful adornment to the stark natural beauty of the place.
There was a time,
When happiness eluded me.
Sucked the wind out of me like a breeze from a pepper farm. Ran away with small feet pattering on hard pan beneath tangled veins of branches and leafs. Happiness skipped and hobbled through brush and sage and swollen streams, moving swiftly into the distance each time I tried to approach it. It leaped over felled fences and through pastures of grazing cows. And then I saw you, smiling pretty with a mink look and narrow eyes of mischief. Paint brushes of sundried width and bristles of boar, stiffened from dried-out oils sopped and layered with every vibrant color of God’s grand earth, each waiting its turn patiently along the thin rail of your easel, begging for a chance to be handled by your tender fingers in a slight grasp and a steady sweep across your rumpled canvas spread taut, and aching to be set free and hung loosely like cotton underthings across a warmed line beneath the hot sun. How I tried to ignore you. How I wished I was the very brush that was in your clasp, your fingers tethered across my waist just slightly, guiding me with calm, untrembling certainty. How I tried to believe it was the liquor that turned my head upwards to the sky to search for the angels harking out from above the cows and green meadows. Surely, they had sent you to tell me to buck up and drop the bottle, now didn’t they?
Now, I ain’t one to believe in that type of stuff. Been in this valley for a score now, if not in reality, at least in my sentiments. We all know the ghosts of groves that linger where houses and buildings now stand. Trees carry spirits, too, and all the things that happened near these trees also tend to float about like a lazy fog none to happy to dissipate at the sun’s first rays. But how else am I to feel?
And so when I came upon you sitting quietly minding your self, your eyes cast afar trying to capture the linear angles of this building and that, your thumb up in the air like so as if you were fixing to hitch a ride along the old Monterey road, well, I had to start wondering where the angels were since nothing that pretty done set itself in this little valley since the big storm of many years ago when the hillsides were suddenly blazing green following days and nights of rain, and upon the green burst a golden carpet of poppies far as the eye can see. And so that’s what I thought about when I saw you settin’ there all by your lonesome self, with brushes splayed about you on the easel and your thumb steady up in the air capturing perception and depth—you were like one lovely little poppy sprung up in golden glory, the offspring of those thousands if not millions from years ago that set the hills aglow to the east when the sun laid low on its last glance at us before heading off to light up another place of this good world and bring mornings for those whose nights I hope were as comforting and loving as I felt when I saw you there.
Now I shoulda approached you. I kick myself now. And it won’t be the first time I felt I oughta lay a boot up my behind for my shyness, but out here among the groves of apricots and with the hum of the bees going about the business of bees, I figured angels and those sent down from them ought not to be disturbed. It’s a principle of life that God’s gifts are to be admired unsullied by the sinfilled hands of man, and mine ain’t exactly clean from my meanderings about the earth. And so I chose to turn and keep to my heart’s memory your image out there upon the landscape, your mind turned upon the canvas, your hand pausing in the air and a drying canvas trembling at the corners of the frame.
I knew I would sleep well that night because happiness does that to folks like me who’ve been in the world long enough to see it spin a hundred times on its own axle and felt the wear of it as it takes its inevitable slow path around the sun, too.
It’s not often a happiness like that is captured and the day I saw you out there was a rare day of happiness indeed.
#2: I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have done two things in response to the Merc’s out of control comments section, and suggest you do the same. First, stop reading the comments. What little value there is in there is overwhelmed by the racist rhetoric. Second, send a message expressing your disgust to Barbara Marshman ([email protected]). I’m not to the point of cancelling my subscription to the Merc, although it’s getting thin enough that it’s becoming irrelevant.
I’m a frequent visitor to Alviso, primarily because I love the food at Maria Elena’s (1st & Gold). But I have discovered the serenity of walking or riding the levies (start at the recently revamped Alviso Marina). There is also the beautiful Don Edwards SF Bay Nat’l Wildlife Refuge. For the more adventurous, enjoy a trek out the Drawbridge.
Back in the 80s & 90s when I was running a lot, I took the Guadalupe levee “trail” in the summer months on weekends for training runs. The trail wasn’t developed between Airport Blvd. & the other siide of 101, but in the dry months it was negotiable. The few fences and gates that caused barriers were breached by the homeless, so we actually could go all the way to Alviso, but not as easily as today.
I often wondered why all the levees along creeks in SC Valley were locked off with gates. They are great resources for running or biking without having to deal with auto traffic. I concluded that the various city attorneys, county counsel, and the water district’s lawyers decided that if a kid drowned or a lone female jogger were raped while using the levess to jog or ride bikes, then all those jurisdictions would be named as defendants in lawsuits.
The legislature could easily remedy that problem by passing legislation granting immunity to the various governmental entities, making the use of the levees/trails to jog or bike at one’s own risk.
#7 opined:“The problem is the gap between Meridian and Lincoln. There doesn’t seem to be a plan for that. The trouble is that people’s backyards run right down to the creek.” It’s actually more difficult than that—the property lines in that section go to the middle of LG Creek. The land to build the trail along the creek in that section could only be obtained by eminent domain.
10 MHz I couldn’t agree with you more about the “use” of a multi-use trail.
Walkers, hikers, please stay no more then two wide, I would hate to run into you on my bike when there is 10 of you 4 wide across the entire trail around a blind turn.
So much for common courtesy…
You’ll know I’m passing you by “On you left side”
A trail along Seattle’s waterfront, which I always caught @ Pike St. Market, is split in two—one for walkers/joggers, the other for bicyclists/skaters.
The trail is liberally stenciled with signs saying which is which. They read :All wheels” and “All heels”.
Why can’t we do that with our trails? One side of the river/creek for “heels” and the other side for “wheels”.
Sorry for late reply to Guad Creek Trail discussion, been offline up at Scout Camp with my 11-year old.
* Train Watch photos—thanks for the gleaming photos those are glorious. So is it ACE, Capitol Corridor, Coast Starlite, and freight that use that line?
* da mayor: oooh: thanks for the Kerouacian prose, especially like that ‘ghost of groves’ imagery.
* 10 mhz: where’s the guerilla art out by marina, would love to see it. And you are right of course re: cyclists, bells, and ped courtesy
* all re: connecting the trail: back in the day, there was a movement to have a Cherry St. bike bridge be part of the trail connection,which would improve I think the Lincoln-Meridian gap—is that still a possibility? If not, perhaps we could just add a bike lane on Lincoln up to Willow (which has a nice bike lane) and connect up with the trail at Willow and Leigh.
#13.You may well be right about the lawyers, but surely recreation trails aren’t any different from any other kind of park in this respect. I just put it down to the Army Corps of Engineers mindset of “encase it in concrete and hide it”. You probably recall back when the Guadalupe flood control project began, there was quite a bit of a ruckus about this, and we should thank the people who kept the pressure on so we have the nice result that we have today.
I also walked the levees back in the 80s, and I recall a lot of other people being out too, so clearly there was a demand for it. The only problem back then was if you got caught in the rain, your feet would end up enclosed in two big balls of our finest local adobe mud.
I was under the impression that waterways couldn’t be privately owned in California, but in any case the problem is there is no room for a trail along the creek. There are places in SJ where you can see that pieces of front yards were taken for widening streets, presumably by eminent domain, back in the day. But it wouldn’t be popular today. Better probably to detour the trail through the streets. But as yet I haven’t seen any plan for this.
#14. I agree, walkers should show consideration for bikers and vice versa. Walking four wide seems a bit impractical but there are always a few idiots to be found.
17. I haven’t been out to Alviso in a while, I’ve been trying other places.
But last time I was there, if you went out the trail that parallels the tracks, there were some things to be seen.