The North Fremont bike path will go somewhere, eventually.

David Schmalz here. Just over three years ago in this newsletter, I offered a defense for the much-maligned bike path running down the center of North Fremont Street in Monterey, aka the Bike Lane to Nowhere. 

The crux of the argument was that the bike path—which spans between Casa Verde Way and Casanova Avenue—is envisioned to be part of a greater network of bike paths that have not yet been constructed. On Oct. 1, Monterey City Council awarded $230,810 to BKF Engineers to carry out environmental and engineering planning for a separated bike and pedestrian path that will add a critical piece to the city’s bike network. The path is envisioned to go south on Casa Verde to Fairground Road then west to Mark Thomas Drive and then north on Sloat Avenue to connect with the Rec Trail. 

Monterey traffic engineer Marissa Garcia says the proposed path is being called the “Mark Thomas project,” adding that the vision for it came from resident Richard Rucello, who’s long been active in the city’s Neighborhood and Community Improvement Program. And of all the projects that were considered in NCIP’s 2023-24 fiscal year, the path was tied for third-highest ranking. 

Garcia says the goal of the project is to provide a safe, separated path that would connect various destinations like the Fairgrounds, the Hyatt on Mark Thomas Drive and the Naval Postgraduate School on Sloat Avenue. 

The vision is that it will also facilitate a future bike path along Garden Road to connect with a number of apartments that are currently being built in former office buildings.

There’s another connection in the offing too—the city is a co-applicant with the Transportation Agency for Monterey County for a state Active Transportation grant that would help fund the North Fremont “gap” project, which creates a bike and pedestrian path along North Fremont from Casanova Avenue to Canyon Del Rey, closing a gap that currently has no bike lane. That path would then connect to the Fort Ord Regional Trail and Greenway at Laguna Grande Park (funding for that segment of FORTAG is also part of the application). 

Projects of any kind locally take a long time to go from the idea stage to the ribbon-cutting, and building a better bike path network is a yearslong if not decades-long effort. That being the case, every incremental step taken toward making it a reality is, in my view, a cause for celebration.

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