Mid-Week Links: Progress

Marin County

• Contract negotiations between Marin Transit and GGT are starting to pay off, though a timeline for finishing the new contract is still elusive. The MT board delayed a decision on Monday, deciding to let the negotiations play out. (IJ)
• Structures built in the SMART right-of-way, i.e., stations, will not be required to go through the local design review process thanks to legislation introduced by Assemblyman Michael Allen and passed by the state legislature. They will, however, still be subject to local zoning ordinances. (Pacific Sun)
• The new federal transportation bill, recently signed into law, will likely cost Marin some $500,000 in Safe Routes to School funding. Local sources of funding means the program will stay alive in the county, but with rather less robust finances. There is, of course, much more to the bill. (IJ, Streetsblog)
• The Marin County election season is heating up again, with Sausalito's hand-slapping Mike Kelly retiring after eight years on the council being the biggest news so far. In all, 28 positions around the county will be on the ballot come November. (IJ)
• The venerable anchor-out community of Sausalito holds some of the most colorful, despondent, independent, thoroughly old-school Marinites in the county. With the America's Cup around the corner, some of the anchor-outs wonder if their time is up. (Bohemian)
• Novato's new city office building broke ground on Tuesday, signalling an end to one of the major controversies swirling around the community, though don't count on hearing the end of it at council meetings. (IJ)
• Since the Pacifics began playing at Albert Park, there have been few problems, despite the vociferous arguments made during the process to approve the team's use of the field. (IJ)
• And...: GGT apparently runs unscheduled ferries between Sausalito and San Francisco to pick up bikers. Why not put them on the books? (IJ) ... San Rafael touts the recent HOV freeway widening as consistent with its Climate Change Action Plan. (News Pointer) ... Give your ideas for the Larkspur's SMART Station Area Plan this Monday at 6:30pm. You already know my idea. (IJ)

The Greater Marin

• Plan Bay Area has been criticized as too oppressive and too dictatorial to communities that believe all development is character-destroying development. In trying to ameliorate these concerns, PBA may have become too weak to actually achieve its goals. (Underground Science via Google Cache)
• The legal hurdles for California High Speed Rail got a little bit shorter this week. Five lawsuits are in settlement, and other opponents have been cowed by the project's recent victory in the state legislature. (Mercury News)
• Downtown Phoenix, Arizona, really isn't that great, but it doesn't have to be. Shade, density, non-car connections, and a grocery store would all make the core of that desert metropolis more livable. (TDG)
• Demand for walkable neighborhoods is at an all-time high. Riding high on the trend are new urban cores like Bellevue, Washington or Silver Spring, Maryland, which have retrofitted their suburban downtowns into something much more traditionally urban. (Fiscal Times)

The Toll

• A 60-year-old bicyclist was sent to the hospital last night after a crash involving a car driver in downtown San Rafael. The driver stayed on the scene. (IJ)
• Jessie Garcia died Saturday while driving in Santa Rosa. A vengeful driver struck his car instead of her boyfriend's motorcycle, which she had been aiming for, causing his vehicle to flip and burst into flames. That driver, Heather Holmes, has been charged with second-degree murder. (Press Democrat)

Have a tip? Want to contribute? Email me at theGreaterMarin [at] gmail.com.

Mid-Week Links: Colombian Roast

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/39704761 w=620&h=349] Medellín has a transit system unlike any other.  For the steep mountainsides there are gondolas and escalators; for the center city, there are metro trains and BRT, and for everywhere else there's a burgeoning bikeshare system. Whenever I see movies like this, I imagine what kind of place Marin might have been if the trains had never stopped running, if BART had made it across the bridge, if we didn't value mall parking above people and the planet.  What kind of a country would we be if, rather than putting cars before people, we put people before cars?

Marin County

• The Ritter Center will expand into a temporary medical space, thanks to approval by the San Rafael council Monday night, but will be limited to only 60 clients per day rather than the 65 requested. (Pacific Sun)
• Opponents of the Albert Park minor league plan have filed suit, arguing that professional baseball violates the park's deed restriction against commercial activity. (Patch)
• If you want to influence your town, show up to public meetings, if only to counterbalance the protestors that tend to show up instead. (Herald)
• The Board of Supervisors delayed a vote on Lucas Valley's Grady Ranch, pending review of environmental concerns raised by the Corps of Engineers and others. (IJ)
• And...: Corte Madera started work on a new public plaza and cafe at its town-owned shopping center. (IJ) ... San Anselmo approved a new parking lot across from downtown. (IJ) ... Novato will install six electric car charging stations. (IJ) ... San Anselmo is considering major improvements to Greenfield Avenue. (IJ)

The Greater Marin

• Congress approved a 90 day extension of federal transportation legislation, ensuring the gas tax and road construction funds did not end last weekend. The House never took up the Senate transportation bill, and the result is all kinds of bad. (The Hill)
• Cost estimates for California High Speed Rail plummeted $30 billion under a new business plan released this week. (SFist)
• Golden Gate/Marin Transit may not be the best transit system in the world, but at least it's typically on time - something Muni can't really boast. (SFist)
• In the City often?  Need a break from the bustle?  You may want to investigate the privately owned public spaces that dot the landscape. (SFist)

Mid-Week Links: Get a Car

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/37566785 w=620&h=349] There's a major threat to walkable living, transit, biking, and even our highways brewing in the House of Representatives in the form of a terribly written transportation reauthorization bill, HR 7.  Although we know Congresswoman Woolsey is firmly against the plan as written, it's important to keep in mind what is happening on Capitol Hill.

Marin County

• Novato cracked down on unsafe driving this past weekend, resulting in 44 citations.  It's a good move for a city that has seen a number of pedestrian accidents in the past few months. (IJ)
• County planners have approved the Grady Ranch development in Lucas Valley and, unless opponents appeal to the Board of Supervisors, the project will go ahead as planned. (IJ)
• West Marin may help the county satisfy some of its affordable housing requirements by allowing ranches and farms to build workforce and owner housing on-site, cutting down driving commutes into the region. (IJ)
• SMART ceremonially broke ground on its transit system, marking the beginning of real construction and the culmination of years of work. (Patch)
• San Rafael's Ritter Center expansion is on hold pending an appeal by Gerstle Park residents. The expansion would be a medical center housed in a temporary building, though Ritter says they will look for a new when it lease expires in 2015. (IJ)
• West End is apparently a quirky place for the young and hip to shop in San Rafael, not to say that it doesn't have challenges: auto-oriented businesses on the north side of Fourth, the half-dead Yardbirds strip mall, too-wide streets, lack of continuity with downtown, and an anti-development bias keep the neighborhood from really thriving. (Reporter, New Pointer)
• Albert Park and the San Rafael Pacifics are go thanks to a judge's ruling against Gerstle Park opponents of the planned baseball field who had sought to block the team. (IJ)

The Greater Marin

• MTC has rejected political appeals of projects that do not meet its required cost-benefit floor, putting common sense above more narrow local interest. (TransForm)
• Intuition is correct: parking minimums encourage driving, and I think it's high time for Marin to abandon the unscientific minimums posthaste.  (The Atlantic Cities)
• The Americas Cup has downsized its plans for San Francisco and will not renovate Piers 30 and 32 after all thanks to regulatory issues.  Still, the Cup is a great excuse for the City to invest in its waterfront and should be a strong incentive for Sausalito to do the same. (SFist, SPUR)
• Bicyclists like the same routes drivers do, and for the same reasons. I suspect that making it safer for bikers to use main roads would do more for cycling mode share than shunting them onto side roads.  In other words, bike lanes belong just where planners may not want to put them: Sir Francis Drake, Delong, and Fourth Street. (The City Fix)
• Luxury car drivers, take note: you may be driving like a jerk and not even notice it. (SFist)
• In case you missed Smart Growth America's webinar on sustainable communities, they have their materials up for perusal. (SGA)

Mid-Week Links: Room with a View

• Marin's bayshore towns, especially Tiburon and Sausalito, are hoping they don't get swamped by the America's Cup, a 20-day event scheduled for next summer, and have requested an EIR on the impacts the increased boat and tourist traffic could have on their communities.  Included in Sausalito's letter is this telling line: "It is not uncommon for the ferries to reach bicycle capacity and strand bicyclists in Sausalito to find other modes of transportation back to San Francisco."  Yikes.
• If your "other mode of transportation back to San Francisco" involves that bike, and if you're starting to get tourist/gawker fatigue, the Golden Gate Bridge has good news: the Western sidewalk is reopening Saturday.
• Sausalito might build a "hip" bathroom downtown.  It sounds like it'll be a markedly different design than San Francisco's proposed pooplets.
• If you eventually arrive in the City, you might get a good ride down Market: San Francisco might shut down Market Street to car traffic in the near future, prioritizing cyclists, pedestrians and transit.
• Old news now, but San Rafael's Albert Park may soon be home to a minor league baseball team.  Think it sounds too cool to be true?  You may be right.
• Elsewhere in San Rafael, electoral season's endorsements begin with the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce giving its stamp of approval to mayoral candidate Gary Phillips and Council candidate Andrew McCullough.
• Fairfax's held a big town meeting on Terrapin Crossroads, the proposed major music venue in downtown.  Patch's Kelly Dunlevy was there to record it: Part I and Part II.
• Although we normally don't recommend bikes and beer together, I think we can make an exception for Biketoberfest.
• Work on Larkspur's Doherty Drive has been delayed once again, this time because none of the bids were low enough and the city rejected them all.
• And finally, in inevitable SMART news, the agency's new GM Farhad Mansourian is getting paid quite a bit to run the organization, and the Press-Democrat editorial board thinks the deal sucks.  In response to criticism from another source, RepealSMART, Mansourian fired a shot across their bow in his first real, full-throated defense of the SMART project.  Shame it had to be over his salary.