Enjoy the Bay Area Car-Free with Transit to Trails

Get some great ideas on how to take public transit to some of the best hiking and bicycling trails in the Bay Area with Transit to Trails, a supplement to Bay Nature Magazine’s April issue. Co-sponsored by MTC, it features a fold-out map with transit-accessible hikes from Almaden Quicksilver County Park in Santa Clara County to the Skyline Wilderness Trail in Napa County. You’ll get some great ideas for possible destinations and know that you are helping to reduce the Bay Area’s carbon footprint by going car-free.

Footloose and Car-Free in the Bay Area, the front-page article in Transit to Trails, is a first-person account of going “carless” written by David Loeb, executive director and publisher ofBay Nature Magazine (www.baynature.org).Other articles include Up and Down at Point Reyes, where hikers at this national seashore are treated to the sounds of pounding surf and have views of the Farallon Islands, along with an occasional bobcat sighting; a personal account of an Overnight on Mt. Diablo, where the author shared the trail with a tarantula; and A Bayshore Getaway in Silicon Valley, which details where you can access the six-mile Stevens Creek Trail, a $12 million project that meets the Bay Trail at Mountain View’s Shoreline Park.

See the Valley of the Moon from the Overlook Trail that begins a half-mile from the town square in Sonoma. A partial-loop hiking-only trail, it’s just three miles and is of only moderate difficulty. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a 38.5 mile one-way backpacking hike from Fremont to Livermore on the Ohlone Wilderness Trail, traversing rugged terrain in Mission Peak, Sunol, Ohlone and Del Valle regional parks. Classified as strenuous, this trail requires a permit from the East Bay Regional Parks District.

For up-to-date transit directions throughout the Bay Area, including schedules, times, costs and walking directions, visit www.511.org and click on “Transit.” A Web site sponsored by the Open Space Council, www.transitandtrails.org, will be launching in 2009 and will incorporate trailheads from Transit to Trails into a 511-linked trip planner.

Copies of Transit to Trails are available at the MTC/ABAG library at 101 Eighth Street, Oakland (across from the Lake Merritt BART station), or contact the library for a copy to be mailed to you (library@bayareametro.gov or 510-817-5836). Copies are also available at the transit kiosk in San Francisco’s Embarcadero BART station or at the Bay Crossings store in San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

To access Transit to Trails online, visit http://baynature.org/articles/apr-jun-2009/transit-to-trails/

— Georgia Lambert