FEATURE Happy Trails Jim Townsend aims to provide a system of trails so that we can go from any place in East County to almost any other place on foot or with any non-motorized vehicle of our choosing. May 2007

Don Huntington

I sometimes ride my bicycle from my south Antioch home to my office in downtown Brentwood. The best parts of the journey lie along several of the regional trails being developed by the EBRPD (East Bay Regional Park District), under the direction of Jim Townsend.

Jim’s family was part of the big migration in the 50s when engineers were flocking to Southern California to get jobs at the new aerospace companies, such as Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, and Martin, that were helping change the face of Southern California. Jim’s dad worked for Lockheed in Burbank and Jim grew up in the San Fernando Valley.

Jim says that the Valley was a good place to grow up in the 60s. Some areas around Tujunga and Chatsworth were still pretty wild, and he spent his youth tromping up and down those hills on planned outings with his Boy Scout Troop. At other times he and his buddies would ride their bicycles up to the Santa Monica Mountains.

Jim said, “When I was a child we all rode bikes. It seems too much of a coincidence that nobody I knew had ADD. We never heard the words “childhood diabetes” or “morbid obesity.”

Now Jim is a man on a mission. He’s working with the EBRPD and trying to make it possible for young people to have active lifestyles — or for any local resident to get up off the couch and go walking, biking, horseback riding, or skating down the trails that he is helping the Park District to create.

Jim has been working for the EBRPD for seven years. For the past two years he’s been the organization’s Trails Development Program Manager. Before that he served with the Park District in land acquisition.

For example, Jim managed the purchase of 320 acres from the Lentzner family. This was a segment stretching from the old Ennes Ranch property to the south of Black Diamond Mines Regional Park. The purchase served to nearly complete a trail corridor between Black Diamond Mines and Mount Diablo. The acquisition was partially funded by the Liberty Union High School District as part of a mitigation project to offset the site for the new Heritage High School.

Jim said that he was fortunate in being mentored for the trails management position by Assistant General Manager Bob Doyle, who was in charge of the trails program when it first got started over 25 years ago.

Creating an Interlocking Web of Trails

The EBRPD designs, constructs, and maintains hiking trails within each of its 66 parks. In addition, they are working with local, county, regional, and state organizations to develop trails in the areas surrounding the parks.

The Regional Trails Program got started three decades ago. The master plan was substantially formulated into its current state during the 1980s and most recently revised and updated in 1997. The plan will be updated again this year.

From the beginning the vision has been to create a system of trails for pedestrian, equestrian, and non-motorized vehicle traffic that will connect all the EBRPD park properties together, plus connecting the parks with the communities they serve, as well as connecting those communities with each other.

The system is designed to provide recreational and exercise opportunities, and also to serve as transportation corridors linking residents with schools, employment centers, retail centers, industrial complexes, recreational facilities, houses of worship, etcetera.

Jim said that planning a course for a regional trail is much more difficult than designing a park trail. Regional trails must cross a minimum number of streets and freeways while avoiding problematic crossings such as multi-lane highways. Ideally, regional trails provide safe passage for joggers, bicycles, skateboarders, inline skaters, moms pushing baby carriages, and people in wheelchairs.

The EBRPD master plan details 47 regional trail corridors, of which 20 have been significantly developed. These include 348 miles of currently completed regional trails. About 45 projects are in some stage of development right now, which will add 65 miles of trails to the system. A third of the current regional trail plan is finished.

Current projects in our own East County include completion of the Marsh Creek Regional Trail, which begins at Dutch Slough in Oakley, passing through Oakley and Brentwood, then continuing through the site of the proposed state park at Cowell Ranch, ending at Round Valley Regional Preserve.

The Park District is working with California State Parks and with Contra Costa County Flood Control District on the project. When completed, the Marsh Creek Trail will be a total of 14 miles. About 75 percent of the trail has been completed.

Antioch’s Mokulumne Trail (along Lone Tree Way) will go over the Bypass on a bridge near the border of Antioch and Brentwood. The bridge will connect the Antioch and Brentwood portions together.

Jim and his team are also working with the City of Oakley on the extension of the Marsh Creek Trail to Dutch Slough, and working with the City of Brentwood in creating a safe underpass at Central Avenue in Brentwood, and extending the trail beneath the Highway 4 Bypass near the Vineyards at the Marsh Creek development.

The Delta de Anza Trail goes south of Pittsburg, passes Contra Loma Regional Park, and then under Hillcrest. An underpass is currently being built to take the trail beneath the Highway 4 Bypass at Neroly Road.

“We are spending a lot of resources, making improvements to regional trails in the East County,” Jim said.

Working Together

The regional trails program is a cooperative project. EBRPD licenses right-of-ways from local municipalities and organizations, plus utility companies. The Park District builds the trails and the local communities connect the trails with local streets and sidewalks.

The master plan has been established and accepted. So now, when large infrastructure projects, such as the Bypass, come along, the Park District is able to play a role as one of the major stakeholders. This is of major importance.

“We have to get in early on these discussions, and then follow the projects all the way through to completion,” Jim said.

You might imagine a trail manager for a park district as being out in the wilderness with a level and a compass, but Jim says that he has to spend long periods of time sitting in public meetings of such organizations as city councils, utility district boards, the County Transportation Authority, the County Board of Supervisors, Caltrans, and various planning commissions.

“Our job is to speak for the non-motorized traveling public, as well as recreational users,” Jim said. “Without constantly drawing attention to our needs it would be easy for our relatively small and inexpensive pieces to get lost when the puzzle is put together. So I’m at all the meetings.”

Jim noted that the water districts and flood control districts, for example, have a different agenda than the EBRPD.

“It’s sometimes challenging to get the goals to mesh,” he said.

However, he went on to say that for the most part, outside agencies are very cooperative.

But their mission is not to provide non-motorized or recreation facilities. Water district people, for example, might be afraid of dogs relieving themselves on the top of one of their levees since it might affect the water. Security is another issue altogether.

“We have to work together,” Jim says, “to reach mutually advantageous arrangements.”

Jim works with local jurisdictions like Antioch, Brentwood, and Oakley to provide access to the trails as part of community development projects. Jim said that Craig Bronson, the Brentwood Parks & Recreation Director, is an example of a local official who has cooperated with EBRPD.

An Urgent Challenge

“If we don’t create these trails now,” Jim said, “the opportunity for doing so will be forever lost.” He said that East County growth is taking place at a furious pace, plus plans for infrastructure development are being laid out looking forward seven decades into the future.

“We need to get a place at the table,” Jim said, “so we can push forward our regional trails agenda beside the advocates for the other parts of the puzzle.”

The reason for the urgency is that after the pieces are all in place it will be impossible to go back and try to retrofit plans to include trails at a later date.

The Bypass project provides an excellent example of what Jim is talking about. They’re incorporating trail access as part of the creek passage beneath the bypass. Building a trail corridor to go under the bypass is at least a half-million dollar project.

“That seems like a lot of money,” Jim said, “but if the bypass gets finished without this happening then we’re stuck building a seven million dollar bridge. Or else the bypass becomes an impenetrable barrier dividing pedestrian and non-motorized traffic into two insular areas.”

Jim has also been working on the plan in cooperation with the cities of Oakley and Brentwood, plus the Natural Heritage Institute.

For example, the EBRPD is working on the fish ladder project in Oakley to meet the needs of migrating salmon while not impacting access to the Marsh Creek Trail.

Some regional trail projects are part of a larger national grid. For example, the National Park Service manages the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail, which runs from Nogales, Arizona to San Francisco, California. Some sections of its 1,200-mile length come under local management.

The Juan Bautista de Anza Trail, for example passes through our area as The Delta de Anza Regional Trail — a 20-mile corridor that stretches from Concord to Brentwood, passing near Contra Loma Regional Park.

Another long-distance trail is the Mokelumne Coast to Crest Trail that goes from San Francisco to the top of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It follows portions of the Mokelumne Aqueduct Trail when it comes though our area.

Senator Tom Torlakson is working with EBRPD in planning for the Great California Delta Trail, which will wind along the shoreline from Bay Point and eventually to Sacramento, passing through Pittsburg, Antioch, and Oakley. A Senate Bill has been passed designating the Delta Protection Commission as the advocate for that, and officially establishing the concept.

Senator Tom Torlakson has ridden his bike from Antioch to Sacramento on Ride to Work Day, pedaling up Highway 160. He’s making plans so that someday a person could do that and be on a regional trail the entire distance.

Payoffs

The trail network provides our East County with an important transportation alternative to our overflowing roadways. East County has been demonstrating the truth that you can’t build your way out of transportation challenges. The Highway 4 Bypass, for example, is a shining star of state transportation projects. Everyone realizes, however, that when the Bypass is finally done it will have only served to keep traffic from becoming worse. In a decade or two the traffic will be just as terrible as it is now. It will simply be less horrible than if the Bypass hadn’t been built, in the first place.

Getting people out of their cars and onto trails will serve to alleviate traffic congestion. Plus, the act of walking or riding a bicycling reduces pollution while helping people get healthier. A local commuter who can ride a bicycle or even walk to work doesn’t have to join some exercise program.

The trail network lets people get out of their cars and onto their feet. They have time to appreciate the scenery. They can watch the flight of a bird. People on foot can connect with their community. It’s easier to talk with your neighbor when you’re passing him on a trail than when your SUV is sitting behind his at a traffic light.

Walkable environments are especially important for bedroom communities. People can spend a half-hour or 45 minutes on some local trail and make connections with the natural environment and with their neighbors.

The regional trail system will never be complete. “Our work will never be finished,” Jim said, “because new opportunities will always appear on the horizon, new areas of the East Bay opening up. Opportunities will always afford themselves to expand the network.”

Trails Challenge

Now the EBRPD is organizing the 14th Annual Trails Challenge, which has the goal of familiarizing the public with new parks and areas they can go to.

The Trails Challenge includes hikes for all categories of walkers. The challenge is to hike five of the 20 trails between April 1 and December 1. A May Marathon includes the requirement to hike 26.2 miles of the trails featured in the guidebook. People can register through the website, phone, or mail.

The kickoff in the City of Brentwood is at the City Park, April 28 at 9 a.m. Jennifer Robinson will be leading a seven-mile fitness walk from the City Park to the Marsh Creek Trail and back. A walk-and-talk with Senator Torlakson will be May 12, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. Meet at the staging area for Marsh Creek Trail on Central Boulevard, between Deer Creek Lane and North Estates Drive. The walk will be 3.6 miles round trip. Drop in.

Jim admits to being a little selfish about all the trail development projects he has been working on.

“I want this stuff myself,” he said.

“I’m so passionate because I use the trails myself. I go backpacking on park trails in the summer, and run every morning on the Contra Costa Canal and Iron Horse Trails near my home in Pleasant Hill. Plus, I regularly bike on the trails.”

EBRPD regional trails are happy trails indeed when we can spend endless hours walking, biking, and horseback riding down looping and twisting corridors of grass and pathways, searching out for ourselves those magic places where, to paraphrase Robert Frost’s famous words, two roads, perhaps, diverge in a yellow wood, and looking down one as far as we could to where it bends in the undergrowth then take the other, or not.

Because of the trail system we can all know how hobbits felt, and can understand Bilbo Baggins words:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet….
We should give thanks to the efforts of Jim Townsend and other EBRPD people, plus all the agencies working with them to provide these happy trails for us!

Go to www.ebparks.org/parks.htm for information about the 66 EBRPD parks. See www.ebparks.org/resources/resources_maps.htm for detailed maps of all the EBRPD trails.