
Eroded and full of garbage today, a community trail tomorrow.
It's fitting that one of the primary topics at the second annual Trails Summit, hosted by the Santa Fe Conservation Trust, was the difficulty in communicating between different agencies and groups.
The summit addressed all manner of trails—from wilderness to urban—including Santa Fe's current major projects: the Rail Trail and the River Trail. It went on all day on Friday, June 13, and wrapped up with a hike on Saturday. Unfortunately, Saturday also was the day the city chose to hold public transportation input sessions, examining, among other topics, "trail and open space improvements" and "pedestrian and bicycle facilities."
The same Saturday afternoon and evening also included the grand opening of Santa Fe Complex (santafecomplex.org), an organization dedicated to locating the hubs, pathways and intersections of art, education and complexity science.
Many of the exhibits were designed to connect viewers to computers in unconventional ways. For example, an empty spray-paint can was outfitted with an optical sensor to manipulate a computer desktop and paint digital graffiti; there was also a sandbox over which a projector relayed visual information about the topography of the sand as altered by users building hands-on, 3-D maps on the fly.
While the exhibit was intended mostly to examine how wildfires burn through different topographies, I wanted to use it to map out the looming and expansive network of bicycle and pedestrian trails I had seen charted on a flat, draft map the day before. Santa Fe Complex, with its computer modeling and simulation abilities, seems an ideal place to consider current trail plans and examine their impact on everything from traffic flow and safety to problem intersections and efficient commuter routes.
Apparently, however, the first task of high-powered computer modeling should be to help people schedule meetings and communicate effectively; judging from the startling array of professionals at the Trails Summit, it might take a computer model to coordinate and chart all of the current trail-related efforts. It was like discovering an underground city of Morlocks—nobody knows about the vast community of trail planners, but they live here among us, toiling in near secrecy, with little recognition for their considerable efforts.
Theirs is a world of acronyms in which CSF, SFC, USFS, NMDOT, NMSP, CSFPWD, NMDOEM, TPL, REI, BTI, BTAC, SFS, SFWA, BLM, NPS, CRRC and UCPA—to name a few—get together at the SFCT's SATS to talk about STIPS, TIPS, OHVs, CEs and BMPs. Translation: A host of government agencies, private organizations, small businesses, homeowners' associations and dedicated individuals are concerned about the idea of connectivity and how trails work to magnify such a concept within a community. As SFCT board member Bill Johnson and Executive Director Rici Peterson explained at the onset of the summit, trails connect geographic points, but also neighbors, friends and people. Trails also offer a connection to land, to history, to natural beauty, to health.
As one might imagine, a bunch of trail geeks talking trail design, conservation easements and land use policy was less than dynamic. However, between sporadic fits of induced napping, there was good information to be gleaned.
Santa Fe's planned trail network evokes a dreamy future in which it is possible to travel from the Thornburg Campus at Highways 599 and 285 to Tierra Contenta, stopping at the Tree House for lunch and only occasionally fording car-infested streams. Depending on the negotiation of easements through private land and funding continued at current levels, Santa Fe—both the city and county—could soon be a warren of interconnectivity.
Want to go from Rancho Viejo to Pojoaque? No problem. Frenchy's Field to Atalaya? More difficult, actually, as private landowners in the Museum Hill vicinity are currently reluctant to allow public access to trails near their homes. Increased crime is a fear for many, although studies indicate well-maintained trail systems decrease crime rates in neighborhoods while increasing property values.
Private land will be a negotiating point in the River Trail as well. Meant to span the 8.3 miles along the Santa Fe River between Camino Alire and 599, the joint city-county effort involves scores of easement negotiations with private landowners. City River Coordinator Rachel Friedman confirms the city is negotiating for the portion it expects to begin construction on this fall. Her county counterpart, Community Projects Director Paul Olafson, says that once the planned bridge joining Siler Road to West Alameda Street is in (estimated for 2010), both entities will try to complete the trail with one major push. But, at $1 million per mile, the community at large will need to perceive it as a priority in order to sustain the political will.
Sustainability, it turns out, is a core challenge to a quality trail network. Trail construction tends to be well-funded, but maintenance programs much less so. To that end, the Santa Fe Conservation Trust is spearheading a Trails Stewardship Program to encourage volunteer clean-up and maintenance. Similar programs have worked well elsewhere and, in a nod to Santa Fe Complex-style interactivity, the conservation trust will be launching a new Web site this summer that includes detailed GIS maps of every extant trail in Santa Fe County. Users will be able to both digitally examine trails and digitally kvetch about fallen trees, illegal dumping, erosion and other problems, pinpointing the source of the offense and activating volunteer action.
If only the trails could also be maintained and built with the click of a mouse or the push of a sandpile.