On Twin Peaks a new Rec and Parks trail to the summit has provoked an outcry from the neighbors just down the hill who say the department forgot to properly notify them about their plan.

The trail is a straight shot up from Portola Drive and parallels Twin Peaks Boulevard, where hikers and bikers previously had to walk along the narrow road. It connects to existing pedestrian trails that cut off those famous hairpin curves you might have seen in a car commercial or two. According to city officials, the new trail was a necessary improvement and should have little impact on the neighborhood. Other unofficial trails exist on the hillside, but this one was meant to improve on the overgrown path next to a beat-up guardrail.

The neighbors, on the other hand, reacted with their usual rhetoric, borrowed from countless generations of NIMBYs before them: "It's wrong that the Recreation and Park Department can build a trail without permits or notice right in your backyard," Glenview neighbor Susan Linton said of her metaphorical backyard, which actually belongs to the Recreation and Parks Department.

The trail was built with the sweat of 150 volunteers over the weekend of September 28th and did involve hacking through a couple bushes and small trees, but the neighbors don't seem concerned for the plant life. Instead, they are upset that they weren't notified when the department started planning the trail two years ago. Apparently no one gave them a heads up when the 600-yard trail was approved over a year and a half ago either. Public feasibility reports for the trail went up a few days before construction began, but Linton says it wasn't enough time for her airing of grievances.

The reports, meanwhile, found that any erosion of either hillside or neighborhood privacy could be fixed with a few newly planted trees. "This isn't the first time Rec and Park has treated neighborhoods like this," Linton said of the trail that is expected to make the neighborhood even safer. "I don't know if we can change anything, but we want people to know."

Anyhow, here it is on a map, so next time you find yourself hiking up for a sunset photo shoot, be sure to give it some traffic:

In addition to the new trail, Twin Peaks will be getting even more improvements, expected to be completed by 2015.

[Chron]