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Long road yields weak trails from Stanford
by Jeff Segall, CGF Board of Directors

For many decades, trail users and other open space enthusiasts have yearned for a safe and scenic way to hike from the Palo Alto area to our community's open space treasures to the south and west. In 1995, the Santa Clara County released its Countywide Trails Master Plan (CTMP) that included two trails, labeled S1 and C1, to connect Palo Alto to the Arastradero Preserve and Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District lands in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Because the CTMP called for voluntary trail dedications in areas where the trails would run on private land, and both S1 and C1 had to cross Stanford University's property, trail advocates suspected that these trails were unlikely to happen anytime soon.

How the trail plan through Stanford land came about
However, when Stanford asked for some 5 million square feet of additional development on the core campus in 2000, Santa Clara County recognized that, among the other impacts, this growth would place additional demands on recreational resources in the area. Therefore, as a condition of approving this additional development, the county required dedication of the two trails on Stanford's land within one year, by December 2001. Stanford agreed to this condition when it signed the 2000 General Use Permit (GUP).

Trail enthusiasts were elated. Could it be that safe, recreational trails to the Arastradero Preserve would soon become a reality?

Stanford dashes hopes for a sensible trail plan
Initial signs were encouraging. Early discussions between Stanford officials and county staff members went well, with sensible proposed trail routes that would be safe and recreational, and would provide easy access to the Arastradero Preserve. However, senior university officials squelched these discussions and by the fall of 2001 these sensible options were replaced by routes along busy Page Mill Expressway and Alpine Road. These alternatives provided, at best, circuitous routing to the Arastradero Preserve and raised serious safety concerns for would-be hikers. Moreover, the Stanford proposals were for trails that provided little recreational opportunity, which was the intention of the GUP condition in the first place.

Stanford plays hardball with the county
This was four years ago. During this time, Santa Clara County and Stanford agreed to separate negotiations on the S1 trail, which is intended to run somewhere near Page Mill and Old Page Mill Roads on the southeastern part of Stanford lands, from discussions of the C1 trail, which was intended to roughly follow San Francisquito and Los Trancos Creeks, in the northwestern portion of Stanford. The county wanted to study five trail options for S1, but Stanford refused to allow study on the two best options, which it did not like, and threatened to sue. The county backed down. The county spent about two years studying the remaining, mediocre to poor, options and recently began to focus on the least bad option. The option for S1 would run along Page Mill Expressway from Foothill Expressway to Deer Creek Road before cutting east, away from the Arastradero Preserve and through an area known as Ramos Ranch, to the Arastradero Road-Purissima Road intersection.

In recent weeks, Stanford's representatives began a new maneuver. They stated that the university would allow this "Ramos Ranch" S1 trail option if and only if it got the truly terrible trail option it has been pushing for C1. The proposal for the so-called Alpine Road C1 route runs very close to that traffic-snarled road and would essentially designate the existing sidewalk in this area as a regional recreational trail! Much of the trail isn't on Stanford land and most of it is not even in Santa Clara County. In addition, the heavy traffic, blind curves, and residential development in very close proximity to the roadway have made that area the site of frequent accidents. A good place for a recreational trail? We would say no.

The County caves in to Stanford demands
However, on September 13, 2005, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to tie an agreement on S1 to C1. This tie-in gives the university a great deal of additional leverage to push through its Alpine Road alignment for C1. The supervisors justified this action by saying the trails issue has taken too much of their time already. Unfortunately, the supervisors appear to be well on their way of ducking their responsibility to area residents to provide recreational trails worthy of the name. Moreover, the county is once again rewarding Stanford's intransigence. If it does accept these trails, it will be taking a deal that it agreed was inadequate four years ago. What behavior is the county likely to encounter from the university in the future?

Applying pressure for a workable trail solution
What can you do? The County made only a vague connection between the S1 and C1 Trail alignments at the September meeting, and the County could choose to just stop right there, and not to make any more ominous moves towards locking in a useless C1 Trail. We encourage you to write the County Supervisors now, and we will be getting in touch with environmental supporters through our email Action Alerts about this issue.

Supervisor Kniss was the lone "no" vote on the September 13 move to tie the S1 trail together with C1. We continue to need her to provide the main effort and background work in holding Stanford accountable, as the trails are supposed to be built in her district. Ask her to work with the other supervisors to get a good trail alignment for C1. Ask the other supervisors, Don Gage, Pete McHugh, Blanca Alvarado, and Jim Beall, not to give in to Stanford's bully-and-delay tactics. Stanford received enormous development rights; and relieving them of their responsibility to provide the public with meaningful mitigations is simply unacceptable.

Write to:
Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
County Government Center San Jose, CA 95110
Fax (408) 298-8460

Email addresses for the Supervisors and additional information about this issue can be found at www.GreenFoothills.org/trails.