Yuba County gets rolling on bikeway plan

Along with the unseasonably good biking weather lately, local cycling enthusiasts have more good news rolling their way: Yuba County is putting the final touches on a bikeway master plan.

Unfortunately, just like the inevitable rainy weather also on its way, there’s a downside: the plan is just a plan until the county gets some grant funding to put it into action.

But with the county’s last bikeway plan dating to 1995, cycling fans said what’s been achieved so far is progress by any measure.

“Right up to this point, this is wonderful,” said William Appleby, a Loma Rica resident and member of the county’s trails commission who’s specifically worked to expand biking access.

Appleby said a lack of funding has been a problem in the past, especially for grants from the Sacramento Council of Governments that usually go to more bike-happy cultures in Sacramento and Yolo counties.

“When we would submit something, they almost feel sorry for us,” he said. “Now it’s our time.”

At an open house Thursday evening to present the plan, county officials and consultants showed residents what’s envisioned so far, including a dedicated pathway along the Feather River/Feather River Boulevard corridor.

Elsewhere, there would be better signs and/or striped lanes for bikers in parts of Linda, along rivers, in Loma Rica and in Brownsville/Challenge.

Suggestions from biking enthusiasts at a previous open house last fall helped form what the county presented Thursday. “Now we’re sort of refining it to see if we heard them correctly,” said Van Boeck, the county’s principal public works engineer, at the open house.

After more feedback and revisions, he said, the county will finalize its plan and later submit it to supervisors for adoption.

Yuba County Supervisor John Nicoletti, himself a cycling fan, said the plan is groundwork for better economic times.

“We’re never going to be in a spot these days where we take on a grand big project like this all at once,” he said. “The recipe of success is one bite at a time.”

Boeck said he’d acknowledge the plan is still embryonic in some respects, with no price tag yet for how much it would cost to implement. But he and others involved in the plan pointed out when the applications for grants from SACOG, Caltrans and others are available, having a bikeway master plan to point to is a must.

And as Enrique Ramirez, a Marysville resident who attended the workshop and said he rides between 250 and 300 miles a month put it, there’s a natural county feature in place already for bike trails.

“All the levees,” he said. “Just fix them up a little bit. It’ll be beautiful.”

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com or 749-4786. Find him on Facebook at /ADbvandermeer or on Twitter at @ADbvandermeer.