Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition

Santa Clara County’s urban trails offer an important refuge from the city for children and adults alike. For many people living in the more densely populated neighborhoods of the county, these trails offer an important place for connecting with the environment. Often, for families in which both parents are busy with work, a walk on these trails after dinner may be their children’s only exposure to nature.

Bicyclists enjoy these trails for recreation, and they also utilize them as important commute routes. Additionally, people use these trails to access parks where they enjoy outdoor recreation. The Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition would like to support the enhancement of the trail network in Santa Clara County.

This program will encourage the development of more trails, and enhance the maintenance of existing trails. It will also focus on providing people with good on-street bike routes with which to access the trails.

Trail Count 2007

This last September, SVBC and the Friends of the Guadalupe River Parks and Gardens teamed up with the City of San Jose to do a trail count on the Guadalupe River Trail. Guess what we found? A whole lot of people are using that trail!

One weekday 12 hour count showed 959 trail users. A full 65% of those were on bikes.

SVBC will use this information to push for more trail funding, better maintenance programs, and fewer trail closures! These trails are commute routes for cyclists and need to be treated as such.