Item:
“Orinda has some of the Bay Area’s worst roads, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, but how to repair them—and the storm drains beneath—has proved elusive.
“The city has spent $15.5 million on roads since 2000, enough to repave arterial and collector streets but not residential roads. Bond measures in 2006 and 2007, for $59.1 million and $58.6 million, respectively, fell short of voter approval…
“…Roads are rated from 0 to 100 on what is known as the “pavement condition index,” or PCI. A rating above 80 qualifies a street as “excellent.” Less than 50 is “at risk.” Less than 30 is “failed.”
“Orinda’s overall PCI is 49.”
– West County Times, 10/25/11
Having grown up in Orinda, this doesn’t surprise me at all. Orinda’s residential roads snake for miles over and around so many hills and through such a tumble of enchanted glades that the greater surprise would be if civilization had indeed succeeded in taming them all. Two roads on the route from the Village up to the Tilden Park stables, which I became acquainted with during my first few years of driving, fell to nature years ago. One connects El Toyonal, the main thoroughfare, to Wildcat Canyon Road, and is probably fenced off for safety reasons to reduce wear and tear. From outward appearance it’s not in too bad shape, and I expect it could be opened in case emergency exit routes from the densely packed neighborhood were needed.
The other road, last time I was up there, looked straight out of a Disney cartoon, the sort of setting where dark branches loom overhead, spooky eyes wink open and shut from the shadows, and a motley assortment of signs warns TURN BACK! or DANGER! or BRIDGE OUT—ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK! It used to be an innocuous little arc of a shortcut that shaved about five minutes’ driving time off El Toyonal’s sinuous loops, but somewhere along the way the Orindans failed to maintain it, and the elements took over. Now both ends are blocked off with ROAD OUT notices posted, and tree roots creep around broken chunks of what used to be pavement.
Back during the housing boom in the 1960s, some developer got the idea to build a bypass route from Highway 24 out to Moraga, in the open space between the Caldecott Tunnel and the Orinda exit that backs up to Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve in the Oakland hills. The theory was that an alternate route would ease the commute bottleneck on Moraga Road’s two lanes, but the tradeoff was that yet another housing development would sprawl over the rolling hills through which the new road would run. The project was to be a “gateway” out to the Moraga/Rheem area, and, amidst much fanfare, freeway on-ramps and off-ramps for the proposed “Gateway Boulevard” through what was to be “Gateway Valley” were constructed. Then the development plans hit a snag, and the Gateway Boulevard exits sat for decades as roads to nowhere—except for the use of the exit in one direction as a quick detour around freeway traffic. If cars were backed up going west on Highway 24 after the Orinda exit, those in the know would exit at Gateway Blvd., take a left at the stop sign, and then merge right back into the traffic just before the tunnel entrance, thereby avoiding about a ten-minute delay (a practice that continues to this day).
Things began to pick up after Orinda incorporated in the mid 1980s. A few years later, Berkeley Shakespeare Festival pulled up its roots from John Hinkel Park, renamed itself the California Shakespeare Festival, and built a new outdoor theater in the valley across the freeway from Gateway Valley. The formerly unnamed location was dubbed “Siesta Valley,” and the Gateway Blvd. signs on that side of the freeway were renamed “Shakespeare Theater Way.”
In 2004, after years of litigation hard-fought by a group of longtime Orindans led by a feisty, 70-something environmentalist, development in Gateway Valley finally started up again. Under a settlement agreement that the Golden Gate Audubon Society and the Sierra Club signed onto, 80% of the lavish proposed designs, which included a golf course and conference center, were ditched in favor of a scaled-back development that would cede the majority of the open space to the East Bay Regional Parks District and East Bay MUD in perpetuity. It was the best arrangement that could be hoped for, under the circumstances.
Now, amidst the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, as mass protests about economic injustice sweep the land, homes are being pitched to young professionals with prices starting at a baseline of $1.5 million. A polished marketing campaign promotes the idea that the right price will unlock a gateway to having it all—a safe, old-fashioned, small town community, country club amenities nearby, close access to unspoiled nature AND the freeway, and state-of-the art luxury homes. In the sort of cosmic joke that makes it difficult for honest, hard-working satirists to earn a living, the development has been named “Wilder.” The former Gateway Blvd. signs have been upgraded to read “Wilder Road.”
I suppose there’s a poetic justice, of sorts, in the idea that at least some of the proportionally higher property taxes the people buying into the “Wilder” brand will pay will go towards subsidizing repair of some wilder areas of old Orinda. At the end of a long, winding, cracked and pothole-strewn road into some interior canyon, under an oak canopy where California laurel scents the air and the locals know to tread lightly, I imagine the dryads and other folk of the woodland realm are enjoying a good laugh.
