If you travel toward Eureka on the 101 “safety” corridor, look to your right and picture a bike trail along the railroad tracks. This trail is something many people have wanted for many years.

Last Wednesday, the general public got to see the Arcata-Eureka Trail for the first time, on paper anyway. Various agencies held a public hearing on the initial planning for the trail. The parking lot of the Wharfinger Building was nearly filled with cars and bikes spilled out of the racks to nearby sign posts and railings. Organizers broke out some extra chairs as the meeting got underway with many people standing in the back of the room with still no place to sit.

We all got to hear about the goals of the project and what some of the options were. Then, for most of the meeting, the hundred-or-so attendees walked around looking at various drawings of how the trail would be routed. We were invited to paste post-it notes where we had questions or comments right on the drawings or the chain of aerial photos.

Seeing the possibilities on paper spread optimism throughout the meeting hall. And it had to spread the whole way. Aerial photos of the project linked together were laid out on tables that stretched almost the entire length of the Great Room.

While there are some complexities in the options at either end, for most of the trail’s length there were two basic choices:

(1) Route the trail west of the tracks on the bay side, with better views and more distance from the noisy freeway, or,

(2) Place the trail east of the tracks on the freeway side, and there might be less impact on higher quality wetlands, and protection from the wet spray and erosive force of the sometimes stormy bay.

According to Karen Vitkay, Alta Planning and Design rail-trail expert, the constraints on this project are greater than those in most other projects on which she has worked. The railroad is assumed to be returning, the Timber Heritage Association wants to run a tourist train, hunters and other boaters want to keep their bay access points, wetlands must be protected or their impacts mitigated, concerns of property owners at Bracut and the Simpson property need to be considered, bridges need to be retrofitted or rebuilt to accommodate the trail, and I’m sure I am not remembering everything.

Many of these constraints could be easily dealt with if we agreed that the railroad is not likely to return and just placed the trail where the old tracks sit rusting, using rail-banking as a method to allow for the return of rail at some future date.

This is what most trail proponents envision who are new to the politics of this corridor. We need to keep rail-banking on the table and continue to explore the costs associated with it.

But agreement that rail isn’t returning anytime soon may not be forthcoming, and this trail is too important to allow disagreement to stop its creation. One solution bandied about was the idea of a compromise. We could build retaining walls on both sides of the levy to widen the top surface. Then, we could shift the rails to the east and place the trail a little west of where the tracks are now. This would put the trail on the scenic bay side but hopefully minimize wetland impacts. Detailed surveying has not been done to clearly ascertain wetland impacts of any option.

I came away with a sense of optimism that we could see a trail in a few years. The full parking lot and overfilled bike racks at the Wharfinger Building show how much interest there is. Just seeing drawings on paper makes it seem that much more possible.

At the hearing, I talked with Carman Gentile, a member of the Humboldt Bay Bicycle Commuters Association. He was puzzling over what he could do as a citizen to help move this project forward.

I also ran into fellow Transportation Safety Committeemember Elias Elias. He had been riding some of the class I bike paths in the Denver area recently. He said that, even with the potentially high cost of this trail, it was easily worth it. That’s how great riding on these types of paths can be.

On the way home six of us Green Wheelers biked back to Arcata together on the 101. As we crossed the Fifth Street Bridge over the Eureka Slough entering the Safety Corridor, I looked out over the glassy water reflecting the soft evening light, and I let out a whoop. Just thinking of a trail, giving folks scared of freeway riding the opportunity to see this sort of thing this way, gets me psyched.

We chattered about the trail and other things for the rest of the ride home on the 101, listening to the frogs singing on our right when traffic wasn’t passing by on the left. The close-passing cars couldn’t kill the optimistic mood in our little constellation of red blinking lights. We dreamed of a time when we will be joined by more red blinking stars in our own piece of safe space.

Chris Rall is an expectant father of twins. He is a member of Green Wheels and the Arcata Transportation Safety Committee.