The Carpinteria Architectural Review Board last month voted to move forward on the revised Rincon multiuse trail project despite strong opposition from a group of local paragliders.
The 2,800-foot, multiuse trail, which was originally proposed nearly a decade ago, would connect the eastern end of Carpinteria to Rincon Beach County Park, filling a gap in the California Coastal Trail that would run through both the city’s and county’s jurisdiction.
“The purpose of the project is to close an existing critical gap in the California Coastal Trail between the Carpinteria bluffs and the Pacific Coast bikeway that would serve to enhance opportunities for public coastal access and recreation, support alternative means of transportation, and provide a safe and attractive alternative route to the existing unsanctioned, informal use trails connecting the Carpinteria bluffs to Rincon Beach County Park,” according to the staff report.
The trail would start from Carpinteria Avenue just east of the intersection with State Route 150 and proceed east about 2,800 feet, terminating at the west end of the Rincon Beach parking lot.
It would be about 16 feet wide with a “travel lane” in each direction and 3-foot shoulders on each side, and include a 6-foot-wide shallow concrete ditch along the inside of the trail to capture and convert stormwater to onsite drainage facilities, protective fencing along the trail, and a new 14-foot-wide clear-span pre-fabricated bridge crossing over the Union Pacific Railroad alignment, according to the staff report.
The project is budgeted at $12 million, with funding coming from federal and state transportation dollars, according to Matt Roberts, Carpinteria Parks and Recreation public facilities director. However, some aspects of the funding still need to be identified, Roberts told Noozhawk.
The anticipated start of construction is in 2023, but the project still needs to get coastal development permits from the City of Carpinteria and Santa Barbara County, Roberts said.
“It’s a very complicated project with the railroad, CalTrans, county and city all having stakes,” he added.
The project was originally put on the city’s desk in 2012, and the city received some of the required permits but then did a more detailed investigation of the soils along the trail and found that the trail covered an area that had high soil instability, which changed the project enough to require a new environmental impact report, Roberts said.
The final environmental impact review is about ready to be published and made available to view by the public, according to Roberts.
“The idea that you can take a trail that has nothing but ocean views, and the Channel Islands, and then you’ll see whales migrating and dolphins all in a four-mile hike, it’s really unbelievable,” Roberts said. “This trail will have at least 100,000 users a year, if not much more.”
Despite the city’s high praise for the proposed project, paragliders from the Santa Barbara Soaring Association have been opposed to it for years. The group uses the Carpinteria bluffs as a jumping point for paragliding, and it claims that the project will interfere with its activities.
“We like to compare it to surfing because if we say we change it from a nice 4-foot wave to a choppy 2-foot wave, it’s unsurfable,” John Graynald, spokesman for the Santa Barbara Soaring Association, told Noozhawk. “The Rincon surfing spot is iconic, and where we fly is just as iconic and even rarer. It’s difficult for us to sit there and say, ‘OK, we’re going to get rid of the only spot like this from San Francisco to San Diego.’”
Roberts said the project will not eliminate the site as a favored flight sight: “It will just change the conditions a bit.”
Roberts noted that the paragliders have to trespass on private property in order to access the flight site, so they “don’t have legitimate access to fly there,” and it’s really hard to work with the group to optimize the soaring for that reason.
“How, as a government agency, can we bend over backward to try and accommodate this use?” he said.
Graynald said the group isn’t opposed to the multiuse trail. It is just opposed to the current design that is proposed.
“It’s a really difficult project for us because it’s really easy for us to be characterized as we don't want the bike path,” he said. “We do want the bike path, but we just don’t want the bike path and the current design they proposed.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.