Locals fight Alpine Road trail Locals fight Alpine Road trail (December 07, 2005)

By Marion Softky

Almanac Staff Writer

Santa Clara County supervisors are going to get an earful about trails next Tuesday, December 13.

Trail lovers, and even some golfers, from both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties will be telling the supervisors not to approve a recreational trail for Stanford along busy Alpine Road in San Mateo County, traveled by an estimated 28,000 cars a day.

Whatever action Santa Clara County takes, the trail can't be installed without the permission of San Mateo County.

The issue of trails has been plaguing Santa Clara County for five years, ever since Stanford promised to build two recreational trails as a condition for being allowed to add nearly five million square feet of new building on campus.

An immediate problem arose: trail proponents envisioned recreational trails crossing Stanford's open lands, while the university insisted it agreed to trails along the perimeter, not across its interior lands.

In the case of the northern trail -- known as C-1 -- Stanford has refused to run the trail on the campus side of the golf course and across its open lands above Los Trancos Creek.

Instead the university wants to rebuild and widen the existing bike trail along busy Alpine Road in San Mateo County and Portola Valley.

Stanford is proposing to pay for expanding the current bike trail, which is narrow and occasionally squeezed between the busy road and the creek, to 8 feet with 2-foot shoulders.

After five years of haggling, the parties have agreed to a southern S-1 trail alignment in the general vicinity of Page Mill Road. But, on September 13, the Santa Clara County supervisors voted 4-1 to agree to Stanford's proposal requiring an agreement on the C-1 trail in San Mateo County as a condition for approving the S-1 trail around the southern end of campus. A deadline for a final decision was set for Tuesday, December 13.

Supervisor Liz Kniss, who represents Palo Alto and Stanford, voted against the requirement to tie approval of the northern trail, which is in another county and has not had environmental studies, to the southern one, which is almost ready for construction. She said she felt "blindsided."

So did residents of communities along Alpine Road, Ladera, and Portola Valley, and a host of other trail lovers including many Stanford alumni and employees in two counties, and even some golfers. Thirteen of these groups have formed the Stanford Trails Coalition, which is fighting for an alternative trail across Stanford lands.

"I am a Stanford professor, and this sounds like a horrible abuse of power," read one of the comments submitted on the petitions being circulated by the coalition.

The opponents of the Alpine Road trail say they have obtained more than 700 signatures on petitions, said spokeswoman Ginger Holt of Stanford Weekend Acres, an old summer-home community squeezed between Alpine Road and San Francisquito Creek. They are lobbying supervisors and staff in two counties, exploring legal options, and urging people to speak out at meetings in both counties.

Most visibly, the coalition ran a 30-second TV spot during the Big Game between Stanford and UC Berkeley, saying "Come on, Stanford, do what you promised."

The coalition supports an alternate alignment that would hug the perimeter of Stanford's developable lands, and make use of the existing Dish trail for part of its length.
@INFORMATION

The Santa Clara County supervisors meeting will be held Tuesday, December 13, in San Jose. For information on opposition to the Alpine trail, call Brian Schmidt of the Committee for Green Foothills at 968-7243; or go to nosidewalk.com.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.