SAN RAMON — There are some combinations that go well together: peanut butter and jelly. Abbott and Costello. Football and Sundays.
Now there’s a new one in San Ramon: bark and ride.
No, that’s not a misprint, but a fusion name of the two uses the newest public facility in the Dougherty Valley has to offer: a dog park and a park-and-ride lot for commuters.
When planning for public facilities in the Dougherty Valley, there was a need to add a dog park and an area where residents could meet up for carpools or to take public transit. Karen McNamara, the city’s interim park and community services director, doesn’t know where the idea came from to combine the two uses on the 4.5-acre parcel at Bollinger Canyon Road and Stoneleaf Drive, but it turns out they are a perfect combination for the site.
The park is now open for use. A formal grand opening is expected to take place later this year.
For one, having the park-and-ride next to the dog park — which has an area for small dogs and one for large dogs — means more parking available, McNamara said, a total of 50 spots.
Having the shared lot with the park-and-ride is a plus for the dog park.
The commuter lot will not be in heavy use on evenings and weekends, times when the dog park is expected to be especially popular.
For those using park-and-ride, the facility is near a residential neighborhood, instead of near a freeway, meaning residents don’t have to drive a long way to the commuter lot to catch a ride.
Residents say they have been waiting for a dog park to open in the Dougherty Valley.
Mike Noubani, who lives nearby, said he was excited about it because his family’s dog needs space to run, but the name of the park did draw some confusion among his family.
“We thought they misspelled it,” he said. “We didn’t know what it was.”
The shape and location of the property — located under power lines — restricted its use, said McNamara.
“You can’t do a lot of things under the power lines,” she said. “You can’t plant really large trees and things like that. It suits itself for parking cars.”
The dog park doesn’t need a lot of trees either and the shape worked for that use too, McNamara said.
“It’s kind of a combination win-win for having something there for that space, that land, that otherwise would not be usable,” she said.
Contact Sophia Kazmi at 925-847-2122. Follow her at Twitter.com/sophiakazmi.
