Is Sonoma County Being Railroaded Into Bad Bike Path Deal?

Who Really Owns RR Right-Of-Way?

By Larry Barnett

The County of Sonoma plans to spend $2.7 million to purchase an abandoned railroad right-of-way for a recreational bike path on 8th Street East. According to Phillip Sales, former Sonoma County Parks Planning Administrator, the county is making a costly mistake.

“I hate to say it, but I believe that the county is being railroaded by Union Pacific Railroad,” he warns, “and what’s worse, it’s a bike path to nowhere.”

Sales is no novice when it comes to acquiring rights-of-way and building bike paths. After leaving his position in Sonoma County, he went on to lead the Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition in Napa County that built 33 miles of the 47-mile bike path system that will eventually connect Calistoga with the City of Vallejo. He is an advocate for creating paths and greenways that connect people to places and each other. He is a former board member of the San Francisco Bay Trail and now sits on a steering committee for the Bay Trail.

“At present, the planned 8th Street bike path dead ends at Hwy. 121, an increasingly busy roadway filled with cars traveling at 55 or 60 miles-per-hour,” he notes, “and meanwhile, there is an alternative bike route already in use that can quite easily connect to Napa, the Bay Trail, Ridge Trail and Vine Trail.”

Sales has been keeping up on the abandoned 8th Street East railway spur for over 30 years. Creating a bike trail there has been in the County’s General Plan for decades. It’s a politically popular idea but one fraught with technical and legal difficulty. To that point, he has compiled a comprehensive history of 8th Street East (named Germania Street by General Vallejo) and all of the land use transactions that have taken place along that corridor since the mid-1850s.

That history includes the record of the County of Sonoma requesting Northwestern Pacific Railroad to move its tracks from the center of the street, the purchase of additional land by the railroad and the conveyance to the county of a forty-foot wide strip running parallel so that the tracks could remain where they were. In 1925 the Board of Supervisors accepted the deeds for that land in two separate, well-documented actions.

“Honestly,” Sales points out, “the County of Sonoma appears to be paying for land it already owns. I’m not sure if the decision-makers are carefully reading the documents of record. In fact, thirteen of the parcels are the current 8th Street East, a County road that has been used for over a century.”

“The railroad was never deeded some of the land it has used and now proposes to sell. An entitlement was granted for its perpetual franchise for use as a railroad in the 1920’s as an operating rail line; no deed was granted. Once that franchise use ended, the franchise ended, too,” Sales believes, adding, “Of the 20-plus acres being bought by the county, 4.5 acres fall into that category. If you also deduct the current 8th Street (8.7 acres), the County is only buying 11.7 acres as a bike path.”

Accordingly, Sales argues, the abandoned right-of-way rail line that runs north from Denmark Street to Napa Street is already owned by the county, and he has the documents to prove it. “The title company report clearly refers to parcels that were deeded and to those that were not. I don’t know if the decision-makers or staff have looked at the documents referred to in the report.”

Sales has concerns about creating a dead-end path instead of using a viable alternative; low vehicle use roads connecting from Napa Street to Denmark Street and travelling east to Highway 121, Burndale Road and eventually to Ramal Road and the existing bike network in Napa exist, so Sales concerns are only partially economic. “This is the route used by the half-marathon. The roads are little used, provide a beautiful and safer route and connect to Napa instead of dead-ending at an inaccessible marsh. There’s nothing to buy to create a better bike and recreational route. The only people that are going to be happy about a $2.7 deal are the shareholders of Union Pacific Railway.”

Sales is also concerned about how the deal was struck by the County with Union Pacific Railroad, the present owner of the abandoned right-of-way. “On January 31, 2023, the Board of Supervisors authorized the Director Of Regional Parks, Bert Whitaker, to negotiate the purchase of Union Pacific Railroad’s properties along 8th Street East. Whitaker signed a sales agreement for $2,635,346 on behalf of the county, but strangely, there is no record of the Board of Supervisors authorizing that action.”

Subsequently, the County has applied for and received grants from the Open Space District and the Coastal Conservancy, based on that purchase agreement. Yet, Sales believes, these grants have been made based on incomplete or incorrect information. Exactly what property Union Pacific Railroad owns remains unclear.

Sales reached out to Pamela Swan at the Sonoma County Open Space District to find out what due diligence they had conducted, since he has been denied access to the land appraisal report. She explained that, “Ag + Open Space will hire a third-party independent appraiser to review the appraisal to ensure it is accurate and in compliance with the Ag + Open Space guidelines and standards. If approved, the legal agreements, appraisal information and funding recommendation will go before the Fiscal Oversight Commission for their review and guidance, with final funding recommendations made by our Board of Directors. No funds are distributed to grantees until we have Board authorization and other conditions associated with the grant are met.”

Sales also contacted a local realtor who represented Union Pacific in the late 1990s. In 2025, the two met and Sales learned that the realtor came to the conclusion that Union Pacific did not have fee title to a number of strips of property he was being asked to sell and accordingly had stopped representing Union Pacific.

Over the past 20 years, Union Pacific has only Quit Claimed interest in properties it has “sold” to adjacent property owners. Notably, Sales points out that the Quit Claims contain language that restricts the buyers’ future use of the land, including language that bars the use of the land for “parks,” which would theoretically include trails. Sales considers this a “poison pill” inserted to give Union Pacific leverage in land sale negotiations.

We contacted the Sonoma County Parks Department to get their perspective on all this, but as of press time we have not received answers to the following questions:

1. Why is the County paying twice for a county road (8th Street East) in connection with the purchase of the railroad right of way? In 1925, the Board accepted deeds from property owners negotiated by the railroad for the 40’ wide strips to the west of the original 8th Street between Schellville Road and Denmark Road.
   
   2. Why is the County buying a 55’ wide strip that was never deeded to the railroad (NWP) between Denmark Street and Napa Street? The railroad’s “perpetual franchise” expired when it filed for abandonment in 1986.
   
   3. Why is there no record of Board approval for the purchase? The item only went once to the Board in Closed Session on January 31, 2023. The report from that Closed Session was “No reportable action was taken-the Board gave direction to the County’s Real Property Negotiator, Bert Whitaker.” Yet, on March 6, 2023, Bert Whitaker, without returning to the Board for approval, signed a Sales Agreement with Union Pacific committing the County to $2.64 million of which the Regional Parks Department has less than half of the funding.
   
   4. Where does the Sonoma-Schellville Trail go?
   
   a. Although the grant applications state that it will connect to Schellville, there is no residential population there. The nearest residential areas are along Burndale Road and the Schell Colony which are almost a mile to the east and would require additional right of way along busy SR 121, which is already a high stress corridor for cyclists.
   
   b.The Regional Parks grant applications cite a future connection to the San Francisco Bay Trail (Bay Trail). However, the main spine of the Bay Trail parallels SR37 6.2 miles to the south from the intersection of SR121 and 8th Street East. There is a Bay Trail connector to the existing Bay Trail at Stanly Ranch in Napa via Ramal Road, Duhig Road and Las Amigas Road to the east. The Sonoma-Schellville Trail would require significant right of way acquisition, environmental clearance and mitigations to accomplish the link.
2. Why were no alternatives presented to the Board?

There is an existing, well-used route that uses low volume traffic and low stress roads that
connects the City of Sonoma at 7th Street via Denmark Street to the residential areas of Burndale, Burndale Hyde Roads, wineries, distillery and the Bay Trail at Ram al Road. There are hundreds of cyclists, walkers, runners and even the Napa to Sonoma Half Marathon that use these roads.

Bicycle and pedestrian safety can be enhanced with the addition of painted fog lines, signage and a reduction of the speed limit from 35 to 30 on Denmark and 50 to 30 on a short section of Burndale.

This is an ongoing story, and we will continue to provide updates as appropriate. 

Photo of 8th Street by David Bolling