County Blazing Ahead With 2 Hiking, Bike Trails

The two pieces of land are all potential. One is a stretch of beach along a railroad track in San Clemente, while the other follows the path in Tustin where a track used to be. Add $6.4 million in federal funding and then break out the bicycles and walking shoes--Orange County’s two newest trails are about to become reality.

“This is good news,” said Harry Huggins, acquisition coordinator for the county Harbors, Beaches and Parks Division. “It’s sort of a Valentine’s Day present for hikers” and bikers.

The San Clemente trail, between the sand and an active railroad track along a 2.6-mile stretch of beachfront property, will be 12 feet wide at spots. Combined with a system of coastal trails being designed in San Diego County, it will be part of a 70-mile stretch of trails linking Dana Point to San Diego.

“This has been a dream in San Clemente for a long time,” said Jim Holloway, the city’s community development director. “We went back to some old files and found that people have been talking about this for 30 years.”

Despite the fact that at least 30 trains use the track each day, Holloway said, some 2.2 million visitors hit the beach annually, and “they all have to cross those tracks.” The problem is that many cross at undesignated areas with sometimes tragic results. “We’ve had fatalities at unimproved crossings and where people have run along the track and not heard the train,” he said.

The new trail will give visitors a place to walk separated from the track by a fence, which will keep them from crossing where it is dangerous. “This is going to mean a tremendously safe recreational area where people can walk on a flat surface and have exposure to the ocean,” he said. “We expect lots of residents and visitors to use it.”

The story is similar in Tustin, where, combined with existing and proposed bike trails, the Tustin Branch Rail Trail will snake 9 miles through Villa Park and Orange. “The trail goes through some beautiful areas of Tustin and will give you an off-road experience that is quite pleasant,” Huggins said.

The proposed trail, in a Southern Pacific Railroad right-of-way where rails were built in 1888 and abandoned after a flood in 1969, meanders through several cities. Yet to be determined, planners say, is how much of it will be paved for regular bicyclers and how much covered with softer material for hikers and mountain bikers.

Planners say they expect funding--$4.52 million for the San Clemente trail and $1.89 million for the Tustin project--to be available this summer. If all goes well, work on the trails could be completed by 2002, said Dean Delgado, principal transportation analyst for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which allocated the funding last week.

“It will enhance transportation in the county by providing additional means of getting from point A to point B,” Delgado said.

Not everyone, however, agrees that the trails will be an integral part of the county’s transportation system. Don Harvey, executive director of the Orange County Bicycle Coalition, supports them as desirable recreational additions but says they won’t help people get around. “No one lives and works on the trails,” he said. “Everybody lives and works on the streets.”

Building recreational trails for bicyclists and pedestrians is a good idea, Harvey said, unless it is used as an excuse for keeping cyclists off the streets. “Cycling won’t go away if these trails aren’t provided,” he said, “but it will go away if there is no riding on the streets.”

At least one person, however, is overjoyed at the prospect of railroad right-of-ways being turned into trails. She is Kate Bickert, state director of Rails to Trails Conservancy, a national nonprofit organization that promotes such projects.

“I think they’re great,” Bickert said of the Orange County projects. Though based in San Francisco, she provided technical support for the San Clemente project.

“These railroad corridors are excellent resources for communities. When they are converted in places like Orange County, which is very urbanized, these corridors really represent some of the last undeveloped land available for parks and trails.”

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On the Right Path

The federal government has allocated Orange County $13 million for transportation enhancements. Part of that money will fund several miles of bike and pedestrian trails as well as build a multiuse beach trail. A look at the projects:

Tustin Branch Rail Trail

Purpose: Convert abandoned rail corridor into a bikeway and pedestrian trail, with possible with equestrian use Cost: $1.89 million

Miles of trail: 9

San Clemente Beach Trail

Purpose: Provide paved beach trail and fencing to restrict access across railroad tracks Cost: $4.52 million

Miles of trail: 2.6

Source: Orange County Transportation Authority