February 23, 2021 — As the pandemic drags on, the public demand for outdoor recreation has surged. At a town hall last week, Senator Mike McGuire invited panelists to talk about how they believe the Great Redwood Trail from Marin County to the Humboldt Bay will enhance outdoor recreation in the coming years. Some segments are already built, and some are underway. Some, like the one in Ukiah, will be built next to the abandoned railroad, while others will be built on top, if applications for a technique called railbanking, to preserve and recycle the railbed, are approved. The nuts and bolts of building the trail and funding it will come out in a master plan, which itself will need to be funded.
McGuire’s newly introduced Senate Bill 69 would require that SMART, Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit district, create and manage the trail from the Mendocino-Sonoma county line to its southern end.
If the bill is written into law, the bankrupt North Coast Railroad Authority, or NCRA, will become the Great Redwood Trail Agency, responsible for the northern portion of the trail. NCRA just put in a federal application on Thursday morning for railbanking from Willits to Samoa in Humboldt county.