Bay Trail

Cover of the box containing the maps of the San Francisco Bay Trail

The San Francisco Bay Trail is a work in progress which has as its goal a Hike and Bike trail running completely around the San Francisco Bay. When completed, it is expected to be about 500 miles long. To date, 350 miles have been built and are available to ride. Who is building it? the Association of Bay Area Governments, known as ABAG, is organizing the effort. ABAG describes itself as "part regional planning agency and part local government service provider." ABAG was established in 1961 and in 1989, California State Senate bill 100 authorized them to begin development of the San Francisco Bay Trail. Although ABAG does the planning, the actual building of the trail is being done by the 47 governments along the route of this trail, all of which have agreed to be part of this project. These communities use the same process and funding sources to build the section of the trail going through their community as they would use for any other pedestrian or bicycle infrastructure.

When I heard about the San Francisco Bay Trail, I googled it and found its website. The first thing I looked for there was maps of the trails. There are maps online, but there are also paper maps for purchase, and I purchased a set of maps from the online store at the Oakland Museum of California. One concern with paper maps is they can quickly go out of date. This set of maps was copyrighted in 2016, so would appear to be at least 3 years old. So far, I have not encountered any discrepancy between the map and what I find out on the road, but I am sure I will as time goes by.

The map comes in the form of a deck of 24 4x7 inch cards, each card showing one section of the trail in high resolution. The cards are laid out around the bay as shown below:

So far, I have ridden two sections of this trail, one shown on Card 4, and one shown on Card 6. This is the section of the trail shown on Card 4:

Note that the start of the trail is purple, indicating a trail not part of the SF Bay Trail, in this case a very high quality bike and hike overpass over Highway 101. 101 is always difficult to cross so this overpass is much appreciated. The overpass leads directly onto the Bay Trail. The start of the ride is only 3 miles from my house, so the 20 miles of SF Bay Trail were the focus of the ride. This section of the trail is all paved and travels through heavily populated suburban parts of the Peninsula. I first rode it on July 4, and as expected, the trail was quite busy with bikers ranging from riders in full spandex on carbon road bikes to families with kids. Mixed with the bikers were joggers and walkers. It is definitely not the best place for an all-out training ride, but for a fun ramble, it works well. It is also not the best place to get away from civilization. The trail is 100% car free, but often runs next to roads so cars and houses and the other trappings of civilization are never out of sight. The trail runs through a number of popular parks which contributes to both the crowding and the charm. July 4 was windy this year, and I especially enjoyed the families flying kites. A final point important for setting expectations is that much of San Francisco Bay is more like a wetlands rather than a deep water port; frequently, the "bay" one is riding next to is mud rather than water, especially at low tide.

The section of the Bay Trail I rode that is covered on Card 6 is about 4 miles long and is 15 miles away from my home, so it is part of a longer ride rather than its focus:

Note that, once again, I started on a trail not part of the Bay Trail, the Stephens Creek Trail, a truly wonderful ride that I have mentioned here before. Despite being located near a very heavily populated part of the Peninsula, the trail itself is a bit separated from civilization, so riding has just a bit of a "getting back to nature" feel, though bridges and powerlines were never out of sight. The biggest difference between this and the section of trail I discussed above is that majority of this stretch of the trail is dirt/gravel rather than paved. Were it not for the map cards encouraging me, I might have wondered if me and my bicycle truly belonged, it looked more like a hiking than a biking path, but encouraged by my card, ride it I did. I rode this stretch of the SF Bay Trail on my Public Bike, an urban commuter, not a mountain or gravel bike, but it did just fine. The trails are quite smooth and reasonably firm. The biggest difference between the gravel and paved sections is that the gravel sections can have large mudpuddles, especially after a rain, so bikes do get dirty and fenders are much appreciated. How well these unpaved sections worked was a revelation for me. From now on, I will have no reluctance about riding the parts of the trail marked dirt/gravel.

I rode Card 4 and Card 6, what about Card 5? Much of the trail on Card 5 is drawn in dotted lines, indicating that it hasn't been constructed yet. There are alternative routes through much of this area, I have ridden on some of them, and it can be done, but it is not the seamless car-free experience that I describe above.

What's next? There is quite a bit of trail I have yet to ride connected to what I have already ridden, and I look forward to riding that, but ultimately, I am going to run into the dreaded dotted lines, gaps in the trail that remain to be filled. The metric that truly matters, in my opinion, is less the 350 of the 500 miles of trail have been built, but more how long the contiguous stretches of trail run, for that determines how long most people will ride before turning around and going home. That said, there are some stretches near where I live that make for a nice, car-free day ride. My older son his wife and I used to enjoy biking together, and now that they have kids, I would really enjoy taking them along. However, my daughter-in-law is not comfortable taking her kids into traffic on a bike. The San Francisco Bay Trail provides the perfect solution! All we need to do is to purchase and install bike seats, and a lovely car free day outdoors is ours.