This post is about a quarterly ride series called Wheels and Waterways. This project is funded by the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s Safe, Clean Water and Natural Flood Protection Program, and will use bike rides and trash cleanup events to showcase water infrastructure in Santa Clara County to people in the bike community. SVBC’s social rides are hosted to provide fun opportunities for bicyclists of all abilities to build confidence in riding for everyday use. These rides will be part of SVBC’s monthly First Weekends Social Rides – check them out on our SVBC Events Calendar! To stay apprised of all SVBC events, sign up for our e-bulletin, and mark your calendars for our next Wheels and Waterways ride on Saturday, October 1st, 2022 – registration coming soon!

The Penitencia Creek Trail through Penitencia Creek Park. Photo Credit: Larry Ames

Ride to Explore and Restore Penitencia Creek Trail

On Saturday, July 2nd, 2022, SVBC hosted our third Wheels and Waterways ride, sponsored by Valley Water. This was our highest-turnout and most successful ride of the series yet - we hit the trifecta of meaningful community partners, creek cleanup success, and great attendance!

The group of bike riders before departing from Berryessa BART

The Route

The first meaningful, intentional aspect of this ride to address is its geography. While SVBC supporters may be very familiar with routes utilizing the Guadalupe, Coyote, or Los Gatos Creek Trails, for this ride, SVBC intentionally chose a route on the East Side of town, an area fundamentally and systematically denied safe streets and recreational facilities. By bringing trail advocates from Save Our Trails and inviting a County Parks Interpreter who had never done an interpretive table at Penitencia Creek County Park before, we intentionally drew attention and new eyes to the realities of riding bikes for fun and transportation around East San Jose.

For more information about our work in East San Jose, please check out Eastside Connect, a twice-monthly program to deliver produce boxes by bike to low-income families concentrated around the East Side of SJ; our three-part series of workshops at the School of Arts & Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza; and our work to build an East San Jose local team to advocate for safe streets in the community.

The Ride

Our ride started at Berryessa BART, a phenomenal multi-modal transit hub that has made regional travel into San José more convenient than ever. On our way out, we rode 5 miles to the east straight toward Alum Rock Park along a combination of streets, paved trails, and gravel/unpaved trails.

While the creekbed was mostly dry, the farther east we traveled, the more interesting water infrastructure including spillways, filled percolation ponds, catchment basins, and areas of planned flood control improvements we began to see. We were directly in the territory of the Upper Penitencia Creek Flood Protection project, and were also riding along areas described in the Penitencia Creek Reach 1 and Reach 2 plans published by City of San Jose and Valley Water.

The riding infrastructure proved challenging: access into the County Park is restrictive from the west side of the park: there’s no crosswalk to access the entrance as we traveled East on Mabury, not even a curb-cut to make the entrance accessible while approaching from either direction. When crossing Capitol Ave, we had to make a u-turn around the concrete meridian, and at both Mabury and Jackson Ave, we left the trail to crossed the streets in crosswalks. About 20% of the trail was unpaved - gravel or dirt. The paved 80% ran straight through lovely parks, and brought us closer to the towering East foothills that make up the eastern edge of the Santa Clara Valley.

Wayfinding signage at Lundy Ave after exiting from Berryessa Transit Center

Gravel portion of the Penitencia Creek Trail near Noble Ave.

The Cleanup

Part of the Wheels and Waterways project involves creek cleanups - litter removal from our waterways, beautification of our creeks and open spaces, and environmental restorative action. The journey of connecting with Heartworkers Union, our park/creek cleanup community partner, was meaningful and interesting as well.

A few months ago, some friends from San José Bike Party took out the Raven Trikes (that they later brought out on SVBC’s Ride to Clean Up Cottonwood!) for a day of community service at Arena Green. There, an up-and-coming volunteer and mutual aid organization called Heartworkers Union was coordinating their first public space cleanup. I was lucky to catch the alert to pop over to Arena Green, connect with Al and float the idea to him of collaborating on another cleanup event down the line.

This day was that day! Al coordinated the whole cleanup component of the ride - connecting with the County Parks staff, picking up bags and litter sticks from Beautify SJ, meeting us on-site, and directing us to the areas needing cleaning. He also outlined his vision of the mutual aid organization he wants Heartworkers Union to become.

With 20+ individuals working quickly, we removed over 50 pounds of trash from Penitencia Creek County Park in about 30 minutes.

Al Estrada from Heartworkers Union explains his organization, vision, and today’s goals to the group

Helmeted, smiling folks grab trash bags and are ready to get to work!

Many of us stepped deep in the brush to find litter to remove

20 bicyclists and 3 community partners stand with the trash we picked up - 10 bags!

From San Jose’s newest transit hub at Berryessa BART to the state’s oldest municipal open space at Alum Rock Park, this ride showed to participants the beauties of East San Jose, fascinating water infrastructure, and a chance to join together to contribute to a litter-free community. Thank you everybody for attending, pitching in, and contributing to the success of the Wheels and Waterways program!

If you would like to partner on a Wheels and Waterways ride or cleanup, please contact programs@bikesiliconvalley.org.