Bridging gaps in the Stevens Creek trail continues to see plenty of debate and discussion, and elected officials in four creek-adjacent cities are still a few months away from seeing formal proposals.
A team of city officials from Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Cupertino and Los Altos will meet again July 24 and Aug. 5 to discuss where the trail will run. The meetings were scheduled after a July 20 meeting ran long.
The four cities have been working together for three years on the feasibility of bridging gaps in the Stevens Creek trail network for bicyclists, joggers and walkers. The final goal is to have a seamless trail connection between the four cities.
The discussion of preferred trail alignments by the working team is the next step after a feasibility study was released and debated earlier this year. Goals of the feasibility study centered around assessing potential alignments that could close the gap in the trail between the Dale Avenue-Heatherstone Way pedestrian overcrossing in Mountain View and Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino.
The study area boundaries extend from Heatherstone Way to the north, Mary Avenue to the east, Grant Road to the west and to Stevens Creek Boulevard to the south, the report states. In May and June the cities hosted three meetings that saw residents pack civic centers to comment on the plan, with many residents saying they were not too thrilled with more bikers, walkers and joggers coming through their neighborhoods.
The deadline for written public comments was July 10 and at that time, 902 comments had been received–199 from Sunnyvale residents, 184 from Los Altos, 111 from Cupertino, 63 from Mountain View, 326 that did not identify a location and 19 that were from other cities.
City officials are now compiling the bevy of comments and crafting a final feasibility study report along with a set of recommendations that will go to the four city councils for discussion and review.
The next two meetings of the Stevens Creek Trail Joint Cities Working Team, made up of elected officials and city staff from the four cities, will see city officials pin down preferred trail alignments that will be presented to the four city councils. The official city council presentation packet will be released sometime in September.
A public review period will take place before any information is actually presented to councils for discussion in October and November.
The July 20 meeting saw city officials discuss three of the four trail segments. The working team expressed a preference for a trail alignment along segment one on the creek, near Dale Avenue-Heatherstone Way to Fremont Avenue.
“I think that we really did hear very loud and clear that the creekside alignment was the preferred alignment,” said Pat Showalter, a Mountain View councilwoman. “One of the things that I took away from all the comments was that people really treasured the off-road trail. I think there is this really strong alignment for this.”
Tara Martin-Milius, vice mayor of Sunnyvale, agreed that the creekside alignment was ideal, but for different reasons.
“The thing that I’m looking at the most is that our streets are not safe, they are not built for bicycles,” Martin-Milius said. “We’re not taking care of pedestrians and bicyclists but we are putting a lot of stress on autos. We’ve just had to horrible examples of this in Sunnyvale. We’re not very aware as when we’re auto-oriented. So something that is off the road, I think, is really good.”
Other members of the working team supported a bicycle path along the sound wall that borders Highway 85 on Bernardo. Most of the working team also agreed with having the trail extend to the Rancho San Antonio County Park.
Public comment included residents from all four cities, though the majority of speakers were from Sunnyvale and Cupertino.
“Something that was really important was making sure that this was an addition to the existing network it was not funneling everyone from the other spaces to the Stevens Creek Trail,” said Tim Oey, Citizen’s Working Group member and Sunnyvale resident. “It was really about finding a really safe route for kids and families.”
Other community members wanted to address concerns with the process of the working team.
“As far as transparency and visibility, I request that this body do everything in its power to make everything completely transparent in terms of publishing the preferences of the city council members participating in this body, that the process for developing the task outline are put on the project website,” said Steve Elich of Cupertino. “And as things go along that there’s opportunity for public input.”
The July 24 meeting will be at 1 p.m. in Sunnyvale City Hall’s west conference room. The location for the Aug. 5 at 3 p.m. has yet to be determined.
To view the feasibility report on the Stevens Creek Trail or to review past meetings, visit stevenscreektrail.insunnyvale.com.
