July 26, 2026
By Soren Hemmila
The Richmond Greenway runs nearly three miles from South 2nd Street to San Pablo Avenue, a paved ribbon of trail laid over an old rail corridor. Most of it is easy riding. Then you hit the middle, and the trail just gives up.
There’s a fix in the works. Richmond just landed $700,000 from Caltrans to start closing that gap, money that only pays for planning and design work up to the 30 percent mark. Getting a bridge actually built will take another $30 million to $40 million on top of that, money the city does not have yet. So for now, the gap is still there, and so is the detour.
If you start at the San Pablo Avenue end, where the Richmond Greenway meets the Ohlone Greenway coming down from El Cerrito, the first stretch runs past encampments tucked along the fence line and then behind Target, hugging the BART tracks the whole way. The tracks are fenced off and topped with razor wire, so there is nowhere to go but forward. On the other side, the trail backs right up against the yards of the houses that line the Greenway. There are not a lot of privacy fences, and you see everything: sheds, dog runs, laundry lines.
The weeds are high this time of year, and blackberry brambles crowd the path in long, tangled ropes. You might catch someone out picking berries, working a bush with a plastic bag in one hand, not paying any attention to the bikes rolling past. Keep going, and you pass behind Nicholl Park, glimpsing the ballfields through the fence.
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