With respect to "is it about the trail," I agree it was difficult to tell from Midpen's materials as they focus on the multi-modal access topic, but it really is about the trail as well - more comments on that below. I think all the comments that people have provided about narrow trails, quality of trail/user experience, etc. are well worthwhile. It also helps to provide input that's related to bike access and parking, for example one coastside resident said that they tend to avoid their cars on weekends anyway because of tourist traffic, so they would tend to ride to the trail rather than park there. It can help to make arguments for better bike access to the trailheads (in the long run this is particularly useful along Skyline: Better Ridge Trail bike access and connectivity will lead to much more flexibility in parking).
This meeting was pretty well attended. I saw 77 people on the Zoom at one point and recognized both MTB and equestrian advocates to whom I've spoken. CAMTB and Coastside Mountain Bikers were there. There were a bunch of Midpen people there so maybe only half of those were the public, but comments from the board indicated that it was a large turnout. The breakout sessions were well attended and pretty active but way too short to accomplish much. It was also difficult to understand which breakout session to choose if you were interested in the trail itself. They had a few survey questions that they provided through Mentimeter and gave an opportunity to provide written comments. There will be a post-survey as well so I expect that's where a lot more detailed feedback will be provided.
It
does appear that they intend to have a bike-legal trail for the full route from Skyline. The current maps show the alignment as Purisima Creek -- Borden Hatch Mill -- Bald Knob -- Irish Ridge, and then just a fuzzy conceptual alignment down to parking areas by HWY1. One question came up about details of Bald Knob and Irish Ridge as multi-use trails (would they change those trails in some way). I'm not sure if they've made any such decisions as the overall routing is still just a concept.
Curt Riffle, the board president, asked an interesting question about multi-use: He wondered if they would need to split access on multiple paths at any point to manage different user types. The staff said that there were enough constraints that it probably wouldn't be an option on most of the new route (at least the yellow line on the map below). I think there are still some questions about multiple paths farther down the hill - some maps of Purisima-to-the-Sea show two routes near the bottom but this discussion focused on what's in the maps below.
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A lot of discussion is about parking and multi-modal access, but in my view that all follows from the interest in trails. Purisima is popular because of its trails, and the lots vary in popularity by their proximity not just to places where people come from but also the preferred trail loops. If a good trail is built up from HWY1, that area will also become a popular parking spot. If they provide a shuttle from there up to the Higgins Canyon trailhead, then it will be even more popular - but again it's all tied to trail access. I'm not sure if this is all clear to Midpen but I'll point it out in my feedback. If all they wanted was to eliminate all their parking problems, they could just strip the preserves down to fire roads, like at Sierra Azul and El Sereno
www.openspace.org
