New San Rafael apartment proposal illustrates how things shouldn’t suck

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Image from Russell Architects.

San Rafael could soon be home to 180 new apartments in Terra Linda [1]. Located on a grassy lot above Los Gamos and Highway 101 and about halfway between the Freitas and Smith Ranch exits, the site is an excellent illustration of how close Terra Linda is to being a great place and the kinds of interventions it needs.

The plan

The apartments will be 20 percent affordable, per city ordinance, and the development will include 30 studios (each 492 square feet), 60 1-bedrooms (each 750 square feet), 75 2-bedrooms (also 750 square feet), 15 3-bedrooms (907 square feet) and 270 parking spaces [2] (a parking-to-home ratio of 1.5, which isn’t bad).

It will also include a common area and market, a playground, walking trails, and exercise equipment. All of this will be perched on the side of a hill separating Las Gallinas from Los Gamos. Given its proximity to the freeway, and that sound generally travels uphill, the buildings are planned to be built with sound-dampening windows and materials.

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Outlined in yellow is the site. Image generated from MarinMap.org

Assessment

From a site-plan standpoint, I only have a few nitpicks. The architecture looks like a ski lodge rather than a Mission-revival architecture that I think would better fit the hillside. A more tree-focused landscaping plan would better shield residents from pollution and noise. Paths should come down on either side of Building 2 so people from the upper tier can easily access the lower tier on foot. Exterior parking should be parallel instead of perpendicular to better protect sidewalks and create a more enclosed feel for those walking around the site.

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The site plan. Image from Russell Architects.

But the context? That’s where Terra Linda’s urban design sins continue to cause pain.

Terra Linda was built as a regional shopping destination, with an indoor mall, two strip malls, and office space galore, wrapped in a gooey layer of single-family homes and car-oriented apartments and shot through with major roads. The result, of course, is a wasteland of parking lots and traffic sewers, little walking, and tons of stuff in a relatively small space, not to mention impossibly inefficient bus routes.

The Los Gamos project is just a half-mile from Northgate One and its grocery store and amenities, but to get there someone needs to walk along two unpleasant roads (Los Gamos and Freitas Parkway) and through two parking lots. To get to anywhere else in Terra Linda is to step into an area that is actively hostile to your presence anywhere outside of a vehicle. As a result, any building here will lead to far more driving than a similarly-sized project would in a less hostile location.

Typical crossing in Terra Linda, this one of Las Gallinas and Freitas Parkway. Notice the prohibition on crossing in the bottom-left of the image. Image from Google Street View.

Buses don’t run along Los Gamos – and they shouldn’t, as there is very little there – but they do run on Highway 101. However, bus pads are just as far from this site as Safeway, making them of minimal usefulness to future residents, especially given that the hostile environment will make any walk feel further than it is, especially in the summer.

Slip lanes in Terra Linda. Image from Google Street View.

San Rafael doesn’t need a big planning process to improve Los Gamos. A two-way protected bike lane along the whole stretch of Los Gamos, from Lucas Valley Road to Freitas, would go a long way to improving access. Parallel parking exists on both sides of the road but is lightly used, so removing one side shouldn’t cause hardship. Street trees and improved intersections on Freitas would go far, too, especially removing the slip lanes that allow drivers to speed around corners.

Terra Linda doesn’t need to be awful, and this site could be a benefit. But it’s up to the city, not the developer, to make this place great.

Works Cited

[1] Perra, Matthew. “Terra Linda Hillside Proposed for 180 Apartments.” Marin Independent Journal. December 29, 2019.

[2] Russell Architects. “The Neighborhood at Los Gamos,” November 20, 2019.

A not-so-SMART schedule

Just a little off-center.

Special for The Greater Marin by Martha Lauren.

It's happening. The SMART train is set to open its much-anticipated Larkspur extension next month, finally closing the gap between the train and the San Francisco Ferry – or at least, narrowing it to a slightly-too-long interchange walk next to some parking lots, lest we forget that we're in America.

At the same time, Novato is to gain a new station adjacent to its compact downtown, where it ought to have been in the first place [1]. Service northwards to Downtown Windsor and the new station at Corona Road in the North of Petaluma are planned for 2021.

Last week a presentation was given to the SMART Board of Directors, outlining the new schedule planned alongside these changes. It allows for the additional calls and a modest increase in service from 34 to 38 trips per day, plus ten trains on weekends and holidays.

There is reason to temper any excitement, however. An examination of the proposed schedule [2] reveals a number of compromises built-in.

Late to rise, early to bed

Firstly, early morning southbound service appears to be eliminated, with service beginning at 6:01 am rather than the present 4:19 am. Last trains remain disappointingly early.

It's unclear why. There may be an intention to start two trains out from Novato in the morning, which would make some sense in terms of maximizing efficiency and recruiting staff from a wider area.

But the evening schedule shows Southbound service ending early and all trains ending up back at the Northern end of the line. So either in the morning or the evening, trains must run out of service into Larkspur.

This no doubt saves a few minutes of staff time, but is ridership really so lacking that operating trains in service isn't worthwhile? That would seem surprising in light of the newly convenient ferry connections to San Francisco.

The 32-minute schedule

Another major compromise built into the schedule is that the present 30-minute peak headway becomes every 32 minutes. This is contrary to best practice across the world, where clock-face schedules are favored.

Clock-face schedules see departures at the same minutes past each hour. This means a memorable schedule that allows riders to always know the next departure, and that each trip sees the same convenient transfers with connecting routes.

Last week's presentation clearly emphasizes integration with other modes – the ferries and their 30-minute peak headway, regional buses like GGT route 40 to El Cerrito with its 30-minute peak and hourly off-peak headways, and local buses across the network. A 32-minute headway means either mediocre connections or imposing an irregular schedule on every transit route in the region.

This was all well understood when SMART was built, with a 30-minute frequency built into the infrastructure. The passing sidings were placed 13-14 minutes apart so that a Northbound and a Southbound train could, in turn, clear each single track segment in just under 30 minutes.

However, with the additional station stops in Novato and Petaluma adding about two minutes each to journey times, it becomes difficult to maintain the schedule as it stands.

Staying on the Clockface

So there is considerable value in maintaining a 30-minute schedule in order to maintain convenient regional connections. Ideally, SMART could ensure that trains are dispatched promptly, and squeeze out the performance required to maintain 30-minute headways reliably.

Failing that, another compromise is seen across legacy lines in the UK where clock face schedules were introduced. As needed, relatively low ridership stations would see only alternate trains calling. For each train that calls the one in the opposite direction skips, and they, in turn, clear the track segment in the necessary time.

Having conducted a rough analysis of distances, speed limits timings on the route, I found the current schedule is fairly tight south of Petaluma, so making an additional call in Novato is indeed a challenge. North of Petaluma, where line speeds are higher, there appears to be a little more slack in the schedule, provided trains perform reasonably well at reaching 79mph speeds.

As such, the best-case 30-minute schedule would see alternate trains skip one stop in Novato. San Marin station is the obvious candidate, having much less within walking distance than the downtown station. The other half would make the stop, but then have priority passing through the siding at Petaluma, yielding a 30-minute pattern like this:

Should trains have trouble keeping schedules in Petaluma and/or Windsor, it may be necessary to further introduce hourly service to Petaluma North and/or Sonoma County Airport. In the latter case, riders could board the first train that comes and ride through Windsor if necessary. This would yield a 30-minute pattern like this:

Similar patterns could be applied to hourly service at off-peak times, with some two-hourly calls, should such service be implemented.

Note that the same pattern used both AM and PM would yield good connections with ferries at Larkspur in the peak direction, without ferries and trains drifting apart in two-minute increments.

The 64-to-30 minute schedule

Though some service gaps are eliminated, some in the morning peak remain as 64-minute gaps. While four trains in service are promised over the current six, in fact, the sixth unit only comes out for one evening return trip, leaving the morning service one train short.

This may well relate to the perennial difficulty in recruiting staff [2]. But it is a considerable inconvenience to riders and will undermine the assurance that a train is always coming soon (at least at peak times).

In the mid-day, large gaps are proposed, nominally for maintenance. Such is unusual, with modern regional railroads aspiring to at least hourly midday and evening trains. This is accomplished by undertaking light maintenance in gaps between trains, heavier maintenance at night, and major works during the occasional full weekend shutdowns.

Towards a more regular train service

Granted, many of the issues outlined here relate particular challenges, like the difficulty of recruiting blue-collar workers in an expensive region and the single track infrastructure.

Nevertheless, it is of great importance that Sonoma and Marin remain on the path to a high-quality regional transit system. This means operating as efficiently as possible now, but also keeping the aspiration for a regular regional train service in mind, and doing everything possible to achieve it.

That includes a clockface schedule in which additional trains can easily be inserted when resources become available. Such as that sixth train in the morning schedule or an hourly mid-day service.

It also includes integrating infrastructure and schedule planning. Consideration of more stations should take place alongside consideration of how to maintain service, with measures such as longer passing sidings and improved speeds. Or in the longer term, extensive double-tracking and/or electric trains, the superior acceleration of which permits more stops in a given trip time.

At best, the train can be the engine of its own success. Regular transit service, combined with planning measures that allow housing for various incomes close to stations, can create the sort of growing and diverse regional economy that attracts both riders and the workers required to serve them.

Works Cited

[1] Edmondson, David. ‘Downtown Novato Is a Better Place for a Train Station’. The Greater Marin (blog), 8 September 2015.

[2] Houston. ‘SMART Pitches New Train Schedules, Announces Larkspur Opening’. Marin Independent Journal. 21 November 2019.

[3] Prado, Mark. ‘North Bay Housing Costs Have SMART Scrambling for Engineers’. Marin Independent Journal. 23 July 2016.

[Image] Maurer, Jim. 20180114_3389.jpg. 14 January 2018. Photo.

Marin grants $20 million to bad projects around the county

More of this, I guess

Last Monday, the Transportation Authority of Marin (TAM) released $20.2 million in funds for planning and construction of road projects around the county [1]. The funds come from Measure A and Measure AA, a pair of sales tax measures with funding dedicated to transportation. If you were to only read the strategy document for Measure AA [2] and TAM’s Strategic Vision Plan [3], you would guess they’d go predominantly to road repairs and strengthening the bike and transit networks in Marin. You’d guess wrong.

Here are the three big-ticket items.

Sir Francis Drake

TAM has wanted to reconfigure Sir Francis Drake Boulevard from Ross to Highway 101 for years. Along this stretch, lanes are weird, sometimes as wide as 16 feet, and the sidewalks are narrow or nonexistent. During commute hours, the intersections along the route are quite congested, around Level of Service E or F, and bike access along the corridor is nonexistent.

The plan is to add a third lane southbound by narrowing the existing lanes, widen the sidewalks, remove the dangerous slip lanes at various corners, repaint some crosswalks, and do a bunch of miscellaneous pipe and streetlight work for a total of $22.9 million. All of this is good, but there is plenty of bad.

First, there isn’t accommodation for protected bike infrastructure anywhere along the route. TAM’s planner for the project told me it was due to the preponderance of driveways, especially in Kentfield, but that isn’t a good answer given the lack of driveways on the north side of Drake from Wolfe Grade to 101. Putting a two-way protected bike lane on the north side of Drake has its own problems, but there wasn’t even an attempt.

Second, there are a bunch of three-legged crosswalks, where people on foot can cross between three of the four pairs of corners, like so:

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By my count, every major intersection has this problem. These mean that someone getting off a bus and needing to reach the diagonal corner will need to wait through 2 light cycles rather than 1, exposing them to more traffic, fumes, and delaying their trip for up to 2 minutes. Given that a typical rush-hour driver is delayed just 3 minutes today [4], it seems foolish to delay people on foot by a similar amount of time for want of some paint.

The project was awarded $11.9 million.

Novato Boulevard

Novato wants to redesign its self-titled boulevard to accommodate more traffic, estimating that the road will decline from level of service B (no traffic ever) to level of service C (heavy traffic at rush hour but no delays) level of service D (heavy traffic with mild delays) to level of service F (stop-and-go) by 2043 [5]. As recently as 2014, the road was operating with no delays (level of service B) [6], so the fast decline in service could simply be temporary or easily diverted. Rather than go with the 5-lane alternative, which would have actually widened the already-bloated road and destroyed six houses, Novato has chosen a 3-lane alternative, which still takes some property but doesn’t add capacity to the street. While better than the 5-lane version, this remains a bad plan.

Image from the City of Novato.

I looked at Novato Boulevard as an example of an obese street a few years back [7]. Novato Boulevard has no traffic problems today and actually has capacity to spare. But instead of looking at future level-of-service, I came up with a proposal to right-size the street: eliminate the center turn lane, narrow the traffic lanes to 10 feet, widen the sidewalks and planting strips, and, of course, add protected bike infrastructure. Novato’s preferred plan does none of that, instead keeping 5-foot wide painted bike lanes (which are absolutely inappropriate on a major road) and a 13-foot-wide center turn lane – wider than a freeway lane. And remember, it’s extremely rare for this street to have any traffic whatsoever.

Somehow, this pointless project got another $1 million.

Highway 101 to I-580 Connector

One of the perennial headaches of Marin’s freeway system is going from northbound 101 to eastbound 580. Right now, drivers need to exit 101 onto a surface street – Bellam – before merging back onto 580, causing rush-hour backups. Caltrans and TAM want to fix this by building a new interchange, at a cost of up to $265 million, to allow drivers to stay on the freeway.

There are two problems with this approach. The first is that TAM staff showed back in early 2016 that the intersection with Bellam can be upgraded to a level of service C – meaning you’ll need to wait just one light cycle – and eliminate the backup onto 101 entirely with a small widening and reconfiguration [8]. It’s not necessary to build a whole new interchange or ramp.

The second issue is that if the goal is to ease commuters going between the East Bay and southern Marin (or vice versa), the real slowdowns happen elsewhere. In Marin, it’s at Westbound 580 to southbound 101, which involves a much more complicated route through surface streets, a transfer that the ramp project wouldn’t ease. In the East Bay, the westbound backup approaching the bridge’s toll plaza regularly stretches back for three miles and take up to 40 minutes to get through. Helping this would mean switching to electronic toll collection, not a new ramp in Marin.

In short, TAM is putting $6 million towards an essentially useless quarter-billion-dollar project. On the plus side, it will do little to promote driving given that it’ll do so little to speed driving. But Marin has other priorities that need funding, and $6 million can buy a lot of protected bike infrastructure.

What about environmentalism?

These projects are all about driving and cars, but Marin’s transportation problems are all about bikes, transit, and carpooling. The county’s priorities should be:

1. Make Marin County a world-class biking county, rivalling The Netherlands in bike safety and access.

2. Make buses faster, with bus-only lanes from Santa Rosa to the SF Transit Center, working with SCTA and SFMTA to make it happen through the neighboring counties.

3. Make buses cheaper, cutting regional fares by at least 20 percent and funding free transfers between the agencies Golden Gate Transit operates around.

Listening to TAM, they talk a good game about environmentalism and multimodalism. I doubt any of its board members or planning staff would argue that the climate is changing or that humans are to blame. But if we are to judge character based on actions rather than words, TAM has shown itself to be just as unconcerned about climate change as a coal baron. Each of these projects further entrenches car culture and driving into the collective consciousness of Marin, shirking our responsibility as environmentalists to “act local” in stopping the destruction of our planet.

An old adage is, “Where your money is, there your heart will be also.” If so, then Marin’s heart is asphalt and oil.

Works Cited

[1] Will Houston, ‘Marin Transportation Agency Allocates $20M for Projects’, Marin Independent Journal, 9 July 2019.

[2] Transportation Authority of Marin, ‘Transportation Sales Tax Measure AA Strategic Plan’ (San Rafael, CA: Transportation Authority of Marin, 30 May 2019).

[3] Transportation Authority of Marin, ‘Getting Around Marin: Strategic Vision Plan’, Draft (San Rafael, CA: Transportation Authority of Marin, 2017).

[4] LSA, ‘CEQA Environmental Impact Report: Sir Francis Drake Boulevard Rehabilitation Project’ (Point Richmond, CA: Transportation Authority of Marin, March 2018).

[5] City of Novato, ‘Novato Boulevard Improvements’ (Novato, CA: City of Novato, June 12, 2018).

[6] City of Novato, “Existing Conditions Report” (Novato, CA: City of Novato, April 1, 2014).

[7] Edmondson, David. ‘What to Do with a Road That’s Too Wide.’ The Greater Marin, December 12, 2017.

[8] Transportation Authority of Marin, ‘Access Routes from US‐101 to the Richmond San Rafael Bridge’ (28 January 2016).

Header Image: Popov, Alexander. Car, Transportation, Vehicle and Automobile. Digital Photograph. unsplash. Accessed 17 July 2019.