For the first time ever!

Walk a trail from Cal Poly, over the 101, to
downtown SLO.

Over 28,000 Rotary Clubs worldwide, from Fresno to Mongolia, have designated
a yearly "Clean & Green Project" to counter environmental problems.

SLO Rotary's first official "Clean & Green" Project will focus on providing
partial funding and building community support for the City's Railroad
Safety Trail, which will accommodate bicycles and pedestrians. The segment
focused on includes the most heavily bike-traveled intersection, where
periodically people are injured or killed crossing the tracks in this area.
The completed trail will enable the community and Cal Poly students, faculty
and staff to safely travel between the campus and downtown without getting
into a car. This will reduce traffic congestion on campus and in
the city, reduce carbon emissions, and thus help reduce global warming.

This Class I path will parallel the tracks from Cal Poly to the Amtrak
Railroad Depot, and has its own bridge going over Highway 101. Two sections
of this bike path are already funded (including the freeway bridge) and
scheduled for completion in 2008-09: Cal Poly has funded its section and the
city has secured funding for the section from Foothill Blvd south, over 101.

But these two sections do not connect. The section from Cal Poly to Foothill
is unfunded. This 500-foot portion of the trail and safety fencing, from the
border of Cal Poly to Foothill Blvd., parallel to California Blvd. and the
tracks, is nicknamed the "Missing Link."

To make it possible to link up these three sections of the trail, and
hopefully have them all open simultaneously, the SLO Rotary Club has
launched a two-phase campaign.  It has decided to donate $50,000 for the
safety fencing.  It is also are launching a community fund raising campaign
to support the completion of this "Missing Link" trail simultaneously with
the other two links. It is exciting to consider that in the very near
future, this trail could allow safe, car-free ingress and egress to and from
Cal Poly, over 101, to the Downtown for the first time.

The Rotary is building a coalition of other community groups and businesses
to  raise money toward completion of this section before the end of June,
2008. The Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club, ECOSLO, and the SLO Land
Conservancy are current sponsors, along with the City of San Luis Obispo,
5th Dist Supervisor Jim Patterson, Cal Poly (Office of the President), the
SLO Chamber of Commerce, Sierra Vista Hospital, the SLO Bicycle Coalition,
the SLO Bicycle Club,  Ride Share,  Residents for Quality Neighborhoods,
Roteract of Cal Poly,  Cal Poly Wheelmen, and the Rotary Club of Compostela,
Nayarit, Mexico.

Send donations to the Railroad Safety Bicycle Trail  Project, P.O. Box 1014
San Luis Obispo, CA 93406. For more information, contact Project Chair, Jan
Howell Marx at 541-2716 or janmarx@stanfordalumni.org

Oceano Dunes Preservation
www.santalucia.sierraclub.org/oceano/