Mid-week links: Marin Transit

The latest Marin Transit board meeting was one full of change and surprise. Amid increasing ridership (though it fell in June), MT posted a $1.5 million surplus, which will go into a rainy day fund. To keep ridership on the up and up, the agency hired a new communications and advertising consultant, who will manage MT's branding, website, social media, and communications strategy. IJ reporter Nels Johnson, however, seemed to think the $300,000 consultant was taking the agency "for a spin." And, in the name of efficiency, the MT board cut Route 222, which got less than 3 riders per hour in June. Elsewhere:

• There was so much public comment about Marin's new housing element that the Board of Supervisors had to postpone its debate until next week. (Patch) On a side note, whoever's idea it was to bring in a saxophonist to lead the potentially rancorous crowd in singing, "There's still a lot of love in Marin!" is brilliant. (IJ)
• The Civic Center Drive upgrades look fabulous, but now that they aren't in a PDA TAM may need to rescind its funding. (Patch)
• A driver hit a bicyclist in Fairfax yesterday by turning left through a bike lane, sending the bicyclist to the hospital with a broken collar bone. Though the circumstances seem like they warranted an investigation or a failure-to-yield citation, the driver was not cited by police. (IJ)
• The costs of demand-responsive bus service, promoted by Bob Silvestri as the ideal transit, make it an ineffective replacement for traditional bus service. (Listen Marin)
• The lack of BART in Marin is apparently because we're classist and racist and always have been. (The Grid) Except, y'know, that's not at all why we don't have BART.
• TAM should take on all the causes of congestion on Highway 101, not just cars, according to Corte Madera Mayor Diane Furst. She sat on a working group to draft an alternative plan to flyovers on the freeway. (Marin Voice)
• The Golden Gate Bridge will close for a full weekend next year for the installation of a new movable barrier. This will be the first time in the bridge's history it will be closed for more than a few hours. (IJ)
• Parking minimums can severely constrain construction, either driving up rents in the building or preventing new construction altogether and contributing to a housing shortage. Affordable housing advocates take note. (Sightline)

Politics

• San Rafael council candidate Randy Warren hits rival Maribeth Bushey-Lang hard, saying her need to recuse herself over issues like SMART make her unfit for service. (IJ)
• The move to recall Supervisor Susan Adams failed to attract enough signatures, and Save Marinwood is not happy. Interestingly, no signatures were submitted to the county, so we'll never know how far short the recall came. (IJ, Save Marinwood)
• Paul Mamalakis examines the race for Novato City Council. (Advance)

New Visual of Highway 101 Service

Marin’s bus service is centered around Highway 101 and its “trunk” routes. From commuter lines to the basic San Francisco regional lines to the supplementary local routes, getting from one place to another on Highway 101 should be an easy task. Alas, it is not. Not every bus pad is labeled on the freeway bus map with which buses stop where. Since not all buses stop at all bus pads, you don’t always know whether to take the bus or not. The first time I went by bus to the Lucas Valley pad on a Sunday morning, I tried to figure out which buses stopped there and would pick me up at the Transit Center. Not knowing that it was all printed in the front of my transit guide, I took the 49K and went on a long, 35-minute ride around Terra Linda. Had all the information been in front of me at once on a simple map, I would’ve known that the 70 and 80 would’ve taken me, no problem, but that I should avoid the 101.

The bus map here is a strip map, a simplified diagram showing all stops and which buses stop and which stop when. Though it’s a design that could be improved upon, the map does show all routes and all stops along the 101 corridor. Ideally, the map would be paired with a Highway 101 timetable showing all bus departures. It and the schedule would be posted at every bus pad and major transit hub on the corridor, allowing every passenger to know which bus goes where.

At 41 inches long but only 10 inches wide, it could also be posted inside buses that run along the 101 corridor, allowing passengers to look at it and internalize it while riding, like how subway cars have a map of the subway posted.

Since this is a rather complicated trunk line, be sure to post corrections and comments for me. How, too, could this design be improved upon? What might make this a less confusing or more useful diagram?

On another topic, be sure to come out this Wednesday to the Flatiron, 724 B Street, San Rafael, CA, at 6pm for our third happy hour. It’ll be good times, I guarantee it.

UPDATE: I neglected to mention that Anthony Nachor of My Bay Area Ideas was instrumental in proofing things. He knows the 101 system like the back of his hand, so a hat tip to him for his help.

Street Greenery is Better than Thought

As it turns out, street greenery is even better at reducing pollution than thought. The research that I had found for last week's post showed greenery can filter out some of the worst particles but only up to 8% of the total pollutant plume. New research just released shows that green walls, when employed in an "urban canyon" environment, can filter out up to 60% of the particulate matter in diesel pollution. That, coincidentally, will include the SMART train. The urban canyon environment is when buildings go up on either side of the street and form single walls interrupted only by cross-streets. San Rafael's Fourth Street is a good example of this in Marin, and San Francisco's Market Street is a superb example in any context. These canyons create their own wind environments, circulating air up and then down and then up again in a vertical circulatory pattern.

Green walls are either plants growing out of the wall, like vertical gardens, or plants growing down walls, like ivy from planter boxes or wisteria from the ground. If these walls line a part of the urban canyon, the wind patterns will run polluted air through leaves multiple times, allowing the air to be filtered again and again.

Cities should actively encourage green walls to capture this effect, and SMART should plan for it where trains will run through residential areas. In places where buildings may rise above the freeway, as in the Downtown San Rafael Station Area Plan, green walls could be especially helpful in filtering the worst part of the air. Any investment in greenery for health reasons will be best put here. Similarly, where the freeway runs at ground level, ivy should be encouraged to grow on the sound walls.

As an added bonus, greenery cuts down on urban noise. Given how loud both the freeway is and the SMART train will be, encouraging leafy walls will be able to make our city streets that much more livable.

Investing in greenery is the single most cost-effective way to reduce pollutants and keep our cities healthy. With the new construction and higher-density zoning slated for areas up and down the 101 corridor, city councils and planning agencies need to take it seriously as more than just environmental greenwashing.

Freeways Don’t Need to be a Housing Show-Stopper

It’s common sense that living near a freeway isn’t healthy. The pollution from the cars and grit from the roadway make for what most would term a wholly unpleasant experience. Unfortunately, the only places for infill development, not to mention quite a few SMART stations, are near Highway 101. Before any post-SMART buildings are built, communities in Marin and Sonoma need to take measures to mitigate these negative health effects, or we’ll simply be building health problems for the future. Roadway pollution is almost entirely from tailpipe emissions, and most of the health effects are from particulate material, that brown smoke most recognizably seen coming out of large truck exhaust pipes.  It’s nasty stuff (PDF), not only because the shape of the particles increases the risk of asthma and lung cancer but because they carry heavy metals, which can contribute to diminished brain formation in children.  Gases, such as carbon monoxide, are less hazardous to the health of nearby residents.

These particulates, at least when they come from a freeway, are concentrated within 200 feet of the road, though they are measurable up to half a mile away during the day and 1.5 miles away during the early morning hours.  In Marin, that means a huge portion of the county lives with 101’s pollution: all of San Rafael, most of Novato, Greenbrae, Mill Valley, Corte Madera and Larkspur, Marin City, and Sausalito lives within the freeway’s pollution plume. Only Ross Valley and West Marin don’t need to deal with the problem, though arterial roads generate their own plumes.

Within that 200 foot buffer, though, is the most danger, and the most opportunity to cut pollution.  Solid barriers, such as sound walls, send the pollution upward, dispersing it but still leaving high concentrations near the freeway.  Plant barriers (PDF) also send a plume upward, but much less pollution reaches the areas near the freeway. Instead, they collect the particulates on leaves and act as natural filters.  Using both solid barriers and plant barriers, of course, yields better results than using only one.

Practically, this means that, wherever pollution is a concern, local government and Caltrans should try to plant trees and build walls to contain and filter out the pollutants.

Another tool in our air pollution mitigation toolbox is building design. Most people spend most of their time inside. When discussing pollutants, it’s ultimately about how the pollution gets into apartments or offices. Most obviously, plants can be grown on rooftops and on the sides of buildings to filter pollutants in concert with whatever is next to the freeway. Inside the building, the county can require air filters.

Air filters for freeway pollution are effective. Most particulates can be filtered with specialized HVAC systems that, though they run upwards of $700 per apartment unit per year to operate, though yield an estimated $2,100 in health care savings annually.  These systems are required in San Francisco for developments near freeways and are a logical step for Marin to take. The county might go the extra step to subsidize the filters for affordable units included in market-rate developments.  However, these don’t filter out ultrafine particles, which constitute most of the particulates in freeway pollution. Laboratory-quality HEPA filters are even more expensive than San Francisco’s standard, but not much more, and could be encouraged through subsidy or required by law.

Exposure could be further limited by encouraging office development closest to the freeway.  The buildings, along with rooftop gardens, would act as a pollution wall for residences further back.

In short, while air pollution is a major concern for building new residences along the freeway, it should not be a show-stopper. Building higher up the valleys or sprawling outward in other parts of the region will only make traffic and pollution worse. The North Bay's governments need to make mitigation part of their building codes before any more major developments are built if they want to get ahead of the curve. It will save them money in the long-run and will make their new communities far more livable than they would be otherwise.

Mid-Week Links: Plaid

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/4140910 w=620&h=357] Now that Fairfax and Sausalito are cracking down on cyclists violating stop-signs, perhaps it's important to ask whether current law is the best law. A bicycle, after all, is absolutely not a car - it can stop faster, gives a better field of view, and is much more efficient when moving than when stopped. Idaho allows cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, to great effect. California ought to pass the same.

Marin County

• Marin and Sonoma both dropped state parks from their park taxes after $54 million was found in the state parks department's coffers. While Sonoma's plan is dead, Marin's tax plan would go to county open space instead. (Planetizen, IJ, Press Democrat)
• Larkspur and Tiburon are both pondering library expansions, though residents in both communities wonder if the proposed buildings will be too large for the demand. (IJ)
• HOV lanes in Novato are now open to the driving public, ensuring easy driving for a little bit until traffic catches up with capacity. (IJ)
• A permanent farmer's market, a roundabout, and other improvements will come to the Civic Center under a plan recently approved by the Board. Unfortunately, it's at odds with the SMART Station Area Plan for the Christmas Tree Lot just south of the station, which calls for 4-5 story residential and retail. Planning and design for the improvements will cost about $2 million. (IJ)
• And...: Construction has begun on SMART's railcars. Delivery is expected in about a year. (Patch) ... Novato will convert a city-owned building into art studios for around $100,000. (IJ) ... A West Marin ecotopia could be shut down for running afoul building regulations, but its builders pledge to carry on. (IJ)

The Greater Marin

• Projections of growth are so often wrong, but they always inform whether we build new freeway lanes or rail lines or whatever. There must be a better way. (Strong Towns)
• Activists accuse Veolia Transportation, which operates Sonoma County Transit, of human rights violations and want the county to investigate. Veolia's parent company operates bus service between Israel and West Bank settlements. (Press Democrat)
• MTC will study a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax on Bay Area drivers to raise money for roads and transit. The tax hasn't gone anywhere in other jurisdictions, but boosters are optimistic a VMT would be an answer to the Bay Area's financial woes. (Mercury News)
• Some Chicago designers want you to help create the perfect transit app. Not only would it tell you how to get where you're going with the schedule, it would give you real-time arrival information, allow stopovers for coffee or errands, interface with your calendar, remind you to bring an umbrella, and more. (Co.Design)

The Toll

• You'll notice I have this new section for the death and injury toll on the roads in Marin and Sonoma as reported by local news outlets. Why? Because in the first three months of this year, 7,280 people were killed on the road in the US, doing nothing more than living their lives. It's the least we can do to report on the human cost of our road-centered policies in this little corner of the country. (Atlantic Cities)
• A Tiburon man drove onto a sidewalk to hit a pedestrian whose plaid jacket he didn't like. The suspected driver, Eugene Thomas Anderson, has been arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. (IJ)
• Three cyclists were struck by drivers in Santa Rosa this week, though one driver claims to have lost control of her vehicle. None suffered more than moderate injuries. Separately, a driver suffered moderate injuries after running his car off the road. (Press Democrat)
• In Marin, two people were slightly injured in a bizarre two-crash incident in Novato. Another driver drove off the road in San Rafael, giving herself minor injuries. A driver couldn't negotiate a turn and so rolled his van about 150 feet down a West Marin hill, resulting in minor injuries to himself and one of his four passengers. Lastly, a driver lost control of his truck in Larkspur, crashing it into a nearby townhouse. The driver and passenger sufferend moderate injuries. (IJ, Twin Cities Times)

Frequency 101

Keeping time. Photo by Egan Snow.

Though Marin has done a really fine job with what bus resources it has - indeed, its service puts Washington, DC's suburban service to shame - it doesn't do justice to its geographic blessings, or the transit-oriented towns it serves. To get Marin on the move, GGT should reconsider the basic structure of its service.

The ideal transit system is a grid of high-frequency corridors. Though it requires transfers, if the bus or train comes every five minutes it's not that much of a problem. San Francisco, Vancouver, and even Tallahassee , Florida, have designed highly successful transit grids.

Alas, Marin's valleys preclude development of a high-frequency grid. Instead, our geography is in a trunk and feeder system. Just like the streams that made our valleys all fed into the Bay, our feeder roads all lead to the Highway 101 trunk. Only two town centers, those of Novato and San Rafael, fall along the trunk, and the rest are at least half a mile up the valleys from the freeway. Though not ideal, this system gives us a number of advantages.

Foremost among these is that our trunk is a freeway. From an urban design perspective 101 is atrocious, but from a speed perspective this is wonderful. Unlike surface streets that require constant stopping and going and cars parallel parking and red lights and pedestrians and all the other nonsense that makes buses drive slowly and a city worth living in, a freeway is empty of all but cars, freeing drivers to push their buses far beyond their normal surface speed. As well, bus stops are relatively infrequent, only as often as an on- or off-ramp, so they don't slow down the bus much.

Secondly, our branches aren't twisty little things that look great only on a drafting board. There's not enough room for that. Instead, we have fairly linear arterials along valley floors with towns positioned right along them. Even sprawling Novato has only a couple of real arterial roads. Most anywhere you want to be is within a half-mile of these roads.

Lastly, nearly all our local buses intersect the trunk. There are very few valleys coming off of valleys like Sleepy Hollow and Sun Valley to muddle things. This means that one could run a bus along the branch from one end to the other and always, either at the endpoint or the midpoint, there will be a transfer to a fast north-south line, which where the real distance is in the system.

Sonoma, also part of the GGT system, doesn't have quite the same linear structure as Marin, but the county's principal town centers lie along 101 and so are similarly well-served (in a manner of speaking) by the freeway.

As an added bonus, our towns are compact. Walkable destinations are easy to find, and office parks are clustered. San Francisco isn't too far away, sitting at the base of our trunk, and the East Bay is easily accessible from Central Marin.

While our bus lines generally follow this system, the trunk lacks true high frequency. A common complaint among commuters to Marin from San Francisco is the awful northbound frequencies. All three all-day routes - 70, 80, and 101 - leave at the same time from the City, and each is a different level of express. Within Marin, wait times are inconsistent, fluctuating between 6 minutes and 30 minutes for most of the weekday. In Sonoma, GGT runs consistent, though infrequent, one hour headways.

The Frequent Trunk

Golden Gate Transit and Marin Transit should set a goal of no more than 30 minutes between San Francisco and Santa Rosa, and 15 minutes between San Francisco and Novato. This minimum level of service should go from 6am to 9pm weekdays and 9am to 9pm on weekends, roughly when service levels drop off in the existing service. The weekday service works out to about 268 revenue hours - 97 hours for the Novato-SF route, 171 hours for the Santa Rosa-SF - about 83 hours more than GGT currently runs. Weekend service would need 214 hours, about 62 more than currently available.

According to GGT's latest operating reports, our weekday service increase would cost about $3.3 million per year, and the weekend would cost $1 million, increasing annual operating costs by 6%. It may be possible to roll some commuter bus service into the morning schedule to decrease costs as well, which may go into an express service like what the 101 and 101X do now. Revenue from congestion pricing on the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as general toll hikes to bring them in line with transit fares, could easily cover the cost.

The Frequent and Accessible Feeder

This is a bus network, not simply a bus line, and we ought not forget about the feeder lines.

Of the feeders, the most prominent are those centered around San Rafael's Bettini Transit Center. Not only do they have cross-platform connections (to borrow a rail term) to 101 bus service, but they serve the most densely populated areas of Marin - Ross Valley, Central San Rafael, and the Canal - and the East Bay. These should be high priorities, with a minimum combined headway of 20 minutes on each axis. The Canal, which already has 15 minute headways, should maintain them.

(Though under the current system reliability and speed should come before frequency, I do agree with last week's commenter Jarrett Walker that frequency is more important overall. If paired with an improved 101 bus system, my concept for Route 580 should absolutely put frequency ahead of style.)

Other valleys should seek minimum headways of 30 minutes between their town centers and the freeway. North San Rafael and Hamilton have uniquely transit-unfriendly designs but the bulk of Marin's population could be well-served by semi-frequent service along valley-floor arterials.

Just as important as frequency are the connections between 101 and the local feeders. Bus pads are typically awful things, and some routes - such as Tiburon's Route 19 - don't even connect well with the bus pads that are available. GGT and Marin Transit must push for stairs, better shelters, paved paths, clear signage, and onramp underpasses to facilitate transfers between local feeders and the 101 trunk as well as to surface streets. They should design each interchange as a single transfer area and provide maps for each, similar to the Larkspur Ferry map (PDF). Improvements like this are sometimes provided already, but should be standard. Though luxury isn't necessary, customers should be comfortable when transferring and when waiting. That is the glue that makes the network really hum.

You'll notice I haven't touched on density, signal priority, BRT, SMART, or the speculative Fairfax-San Rafael streetcar. While each of these things could dramatically improve service along the 101 corridor, they aren't necessary to make a successful system. Using the infrastructure we have today it's possible to make a high-class transit system for the North Bay. GGT should focus on network-wide improvements, and the key to a better bus system lies along Highway 101.

Mid-Week Links: Build to the Boom

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26xOvGADc4c]If you have 45 minutes, listen to Chris Leinberger's presentation in Kansas City about walkable housing development. He makes a strong argument for building more walkable centers for those that want it - exactly the sort of thing Marin and Sonoma are planning around their SMART stations and exactly the way our towns were built a century ago. (SGA)

Marin County

• Caltrans has allocated another $112 million to widening Highway 101 between Sonoma and Marin, not quite enough to bridge the $177 million gap in its billion-dollar widening project, duplicating much of SMART's future service. (NBBJ)
• Golden Gate Ferry workers went on a surprise strike last Saturday to draw attention to stalled contract negotiations. Terminal attendants want a raise as compensation for new duties they took on after ticket takers were laid off, while sailors and captains want private quarters aboard the ferries, among other complaints. (IJ)
• The Board of Supervisors spent $75,000 in discretionary funds this quarter on items ranging from high schools to the opera. Where did your Supervisor invest discretionary funds this quarter? (IJ)
• As expected, Novato will move ahead with its downtown office plan, voting 3-1 to proceed with construction. (Pacific Sun)
• The Drake's Bay Oyster Company has been farming oysters in Drake's Bay for over a century, but the National Park Service may not renew their lease. Though the arguments for and against renewal have revolved around science, the basic question is philosophical - whether a wilderness area should have commerce. (Pacific Sun)
• A nifty tool developed by the Greenbelt Alliance shows the various greenfield developments on open space. Though it doesn't seem comprehensive, for what it has it's quite useful. (Greenbelt Alliance)
• If your bike was stolen recently, it may be in police custody. Hundreds of bikes were found after SFPD busted up a ring of thieves, and they've released pictures of the merchandise. (SFist)

The Greater Marin

• As it turns out, Marinites aren't the only ones who value their walkable town centers. Homes in walkable neighborhoods command significantly higher prices than places that are not. Even Des Moines, IA, is getting in on the action. (NYT, Des Moines Register)
• The explosive growth and new-found prosperity of Washington, DC, is based on childless singles and couples, who each net the District about $6,000 more per year than those with children. (These are the same folks Marin excludes due to density policies.) Now that these singles are getting married, can Washington adapt? (Atlantic Cities)
• About 25,000 San Franciscans were forced off the road when a handful of people driving private automobiles, with police escort, pushed their way into a street fair on Sunday. The action ended the celebration and opened the way for through traffic. (Examiner.com)
• The Golden Gate Bridge was never in danger of collapsing on its 50th Anniversary, despite the spooky sight of a bridge flattened by the massive crowd in the middle. (Mercury News)
• How hard would it be to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge were it done today? Given environmental review, agency oversight, and a more contentious political environment, it's safe to say it would be tough. (IJ)
• The tallest building in the West will redefine San Francisco's skyline and serve as the centerpiece of the new Transbay Terminal. The building was approved over objections from people concerned about shadows. (Chronicle)
• The sector plan for Santa Rosa's northern SMART station is coming together nicely, with a great deal of effort to move people away from cars, reconnect the street grid, and apply the kind of density this sort of project can support. Not everyone is happy, however, with Coddington Mall managers especially concerned over new rights-of-way called for in the plan. (Press-Democrat)

Mid-Week Links: Build It and They Will Come

Marin County

Well it looks like the other news organizations passed right on by the development news this week, and there's no transit news to speak of. I suppose, then, these are the highlights from this week's IJ.

• The Grady Ranch debacle has reached New Yorker's ears. The game of telephone, of course, has done wonders for our county's image as an insular enclave for the granola-munching wealthy. Back in Marin, there is still debate as to whether opponents abused the system or not, or even whether they should be to blame. (NYT, IJ)
• In the fallout of Grady Ranch, county staff want to create a panel to cut red tape and streamline permitting, and the supervisors seem to be on board. The results likely won't mean much for developers in incorporated areas, who often need council approval to open a sandwich shop. (IJ)
• Fully 85% of Marin's land is protected from development, according to a new Greenbelt Alliance study, the most in any Bay Area county. Only 12.7% of our land is urbanized, and only 0.7% is at risk of development. (IJ)
• Michael Rock, town manager and public works director of Fairfax, has resigned in order to pursue a position in what I can only presume is the far less interesting Lomita, CA. His last day as manager will be the June 22 budget meeting. (IJ, Fairfax)
• Sausalito will not rezone a small area of old town for housing development after all. The two parcels in question could have accommodated 18 units of affordable housing but will continue in their role as offices. (IJ)
• Under pressure from the feds, Novato's remaining pot dispensary will close, leaving only one dispensary operating in the county. (IJ)
• The $950 million Highway 101 widening project chugs forward, but the last $177 million hasn't been found. At least CalTrans still has $20.5 million to repave 8.5 miles of the freeway from Vista Point to Lucky Drive. (Press-Democrat, IJ)
• A San Rafael native has been enlivening the streetscape of Washington, DC, by playing the violin to passersby from his rowhome's balcony. (Patch)
• And...: Fifteen office buildings totalling about 710,000 square are up for sale in Marin. (IJ) ... Terrorism, not the threat of bridge collapse, is the reason you can't walk across the Bridge on its 75th. (IJ)

The Greater Marin

• MTC and ABAG have approved Plan Bay Area. It now goes out for environmental review before final approval in April. (SF Chronicle)
• The San Francisco Bay Area has a surplus of capital looking for new tech start-ups but restrictive housing policies drive up rents, which drive up wages, which inflates start-ups' costs of doing business, which drives down the number of new start-ups to invest in, and that's bad for everyone.  (Forbes via Planetizen)
• The State Senate will vote today on the three-foot passing law, requiring drivers pass bikers with at least three feet of clearance. (Cyclelicious)
• The neighborhood planning battles of Seattle bear a striking resemblance to the planning issues faced by Marin's small towns. (Crosscut)
• Young people are moving away from the car. Has the driver's seat lost its old magic? (Washington Post)
• BART's long-term plans include express trains, better stations, and shorter headways. (Examiner)

How Fantastical Is the Fantasy?

The fantasy transit map of the Bay Area I brought up on Wednesday had me thinking a fair amount about Marin's transit options.  Though we are typically the odd county out when it comes to fantasy transit improvements – though Napa certainly gets the short end of this particular map’s stick – Brian Stokle’s map adds two thoughtful improvements to the county’s transit system, and I think we’d do well to explore them, as well as a third.

I should mention that I appreciate the value of bus-only lanes to a degree, but in suburban settings it is sometimes better to mix them with three-person carpools as well.  In Northern Virginia, the casual carpool system functions as another transit system, vastly improving the efficiency of private cars and, therefore, the existing car-based infrastructure.  Mixing buses and cars isn’t always the best idea, but I think for Marin it makes perfect sense, both for political and practical reasons.

The 29R Rapid Bus

The 29R rapid bus line runs in a kind of loop between Fairfax, San Anselmo, Greenbrae, Larkspur Landing, the Canal, downtown San Rafael, Miracle Mile and finally back to the Hub, where I assume it would turn around.

Rapid bus isn’t the bus rapid transit (BRT) system that we’re used to hearing about – it doesn’t have its own lanes or stations.  Rather, the rapid bus concept functions as an express, limited stop bus with some structural changes beneath the surface, mostly to how the bus handles intersections.  These, along with high frequency (every 15 minutes, maximum), makes the bus a viable alternative against the car.  Even without the frequency improvements, adding speed to a bus line makes it less expensive to run and more attractive to potential riders.

The 29R route makes sense.  The Fairfax-San Rafael corridor is the county’s densest, and the narrow valley makes it well suited to a rapid bus line.  The Greenbrae stretch, though not nearly as dense, is an important transportation corridor, and building a rapid bus line here would serve populations that are otherwise left behind by SMART.  Greenbrae is also the kind of suburban strip that is easily converted to higher, more urbanist uses.

The drawback to a rapid bus line that it doesn’t have its own corridor.  Sir Francis Drake gets backed up during the morning rush between Fairfax and the Hub, as well as though Ross and near the Greenbrae Interchange, and a rapid bus shouldn’t be allowed to get stuck in that mire.  The same goes for Second Street in San Rafael.

To compensate, the 29R should be complemented with limited dedicated lanes.  Center, the old rail right-of-way between San Anselmo and Fairfax, might be re-purposed as a rush-hour bus and carpool lane.  It’s odd to imagine a surface street being carpool and bus only, but it would take a great deal of pressure off Sir Francis Drake and speed service along the corridor.  Yolanda and Landsdale Stations, the old light-rail stops, could be reactivated as bus stops.

Though we can’t do much about the Sir Francis Drake through Ross, the boulevard widens enough at College of Marin for dedicated lanes, though an initial segment of lanes should be built from El Portal Drive to the interchange.

The Canal’s traffic patterns are less familiar to me, but it is imperative the bus not travel the narrow streets in the neighborhood, sticking instead to the much wider and straighter roads closer to the freeway.  It’s close enough to the Canal that it will be accessible, but it will keep the bus moving fast enough to justify its “rapid” moniker.

The ultimate cost would likely be in the tens of millions, and building such a system will require more forward-thinking on development issues, but the ultimate reward would be much improved Central Marin circulation.

The 80R Bus Rapid Transit

Much more ambitious is the 80R Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line, running from Santa Rosa to the Transbay Terminal.  Presumably, the line would have limited stop service on its own dedicated lanes for the whole trip, and would share the BRT lanes with other buses running along the corridor.  It would duplicate SMART’s service between Santa Rosa and Larkspur Landing, so I wouldn’t recommend building the line north of San Rafael.

A small portion of this line is already being built by SFMTA on Van Ness, which is getting its own dedicated lanes.  Presumably other streets will be similarly improved, but that’s just for San Francisco.  The Marin and Sonoma stretch will be extraordinarily expensive, involving rebuilt or widened freeway overpasses at minimum and possibly even new tunneling in the Marin Headlands.

The first portion of a BRT system is its dedicated lanes.  Ideally, these lanes will be permanently off-limits to private cars, and would certainly be off-limits to single-passenger only vehicles, and they would stretch along the entire length of the line.  This includes the stretch of freeway south of Marin City, which could mean some extremely expensive tunneling projects or a narrower freeway.  The Golden Gate Bridge itself would need dedicated bus lanes, which in theory would double the capacity of the bridge but would be politically challenging to build.

The other portion of a BRT system is its stops.  Like a train system, the stops would be located along the right-of-way; for the 80R, that would mean building new ramps directly between its lanes and freeway overpasses, where the BRT stations would be constructed.  Alternatively, passengers might board the bus at the freeway level in an enclosed station, and access would be provided from the street level.  These would be expensive as well, and the 80R would likely rival SMART in its costs.

Once finished, though, the system would be a transit lifeline for San Franciscans working north and North Bay residents working south.  As it stands,San Francisco’s Marin-bound buses leave only every hour or so in the morning, making transit commutes rather inconvenient.  BRT would need to run every 5-15 minutes to make the investment worthwhile, tying the City to the county in a way it has never been.

What’s Missing? BART

The missing piece is a strong connection from the Transit Center to the Richmond BART station and its Amtrak connections.  Though today the 40 and 42 buses don’t get a lot of ridership, building a rapid bus or BRT line with direct connections between San Rafael and Richmond would be a boon to Contra Costa County, one of the largest sources of Marin’s in-commuters.

A rapid bus line would start at the Transit Center and proceed along Francisco Boulevard, entering 580 at the bridge.  It would make a straight shot to the Richmond station and turn around, altogether taking 30-40 minutes.  A BRT line would run exclusively on the freeway, with its only stops being at Richmond, the Marin side of the bridge, and San Rafael.  Such a run would take about 20-30 minutes.

Though it would face the same challenges as the 29R and 80R, I like this route because it would provide easy transit between the Delta, the East Bay, and Marin while connecting Marinites with existing rail options the county doesn't have.  Given that the balance of commuting is East Bay to Marin, it might make more sense to build it as an AC Transit system, freeing Golden Gate Transit from making such a huge investment for residents outside its district.

In Sum

In sum, the two improvements, plus mine, are strong service improvements for Marin.  Other parts of Marin could use a rapid bus system similar to the 29R, especially the Mill Valley to Sausalito corridor.  Less plausible is a SMART service improvement, providing 30 minute headways all day, and even less would see the system double-tracked and electrified with 5-15 minute headways, which would likely require another ballot initiative.

Fantasy maps like Stokle’s aren’t meant to be entirely practical, of course – they’re meant to make us imagine what our cities can be like, and what they might be like if we ever get around to it transit improvements.  I’d like to see more of this – how about you?

Mid-Week Links: Two Steps Back

Marin County

• San Rafael, planning as it is for a revitalized Station Area, thought it a good idea to eliminate the crosswalk at Third and Cijos, calling it a danger to pedestrians.  Rather than pedestrians being the ones complaining, it was the motorists.  There has not been a single accident at the Cijos crossing, and the one-way traffic was controlled from the nearby Lincoln intersection.  In place of the crosswalk, there's now a pedestrian barrier.  At least there are crosswalks nearby.  (Pacific Sun)
• Seventy units of affordable housing have been announced for Marinwood at the Marin Market site.  Although near bus pads, the affordable housing site is far from amenities.  Hopefully the developer will be required to improve the crossing over the freeway to the northbound pad. (IJ)
• SMART should buy the Whistlestop building, as the train project will render it useless to the seniors nonprofit. (IJ)
• San Anselmo is considering how to improve its Safe Routes to School Program at a community meeting tonight, and as of press time no decision had been made. Among the proposals are adding sidewalks and crosswalks, adjusting signal timing, and a pedestrian barrier along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. (Patch)
• The Greenbae Interchange Project and the Wincup development will both proceed roughly as planned, as MacFarlane Developers and TAM have reached an agreement on how to accomodate both projects. (IJ)

The Greater Marin

• If you missed a One Bay Area planning meeting, now's your chance to at least get your opinion in.  The Plan is soliciting online comments, and I encourage you to take the time to make your voice heard. (Sacramento Bee)
• The Golden Gate Bridge has installed speed signs for cyclists on the western sidewalk, although there isn't a speed limit on the bridge for bicyclists. (SF Examiner)
• Doyle Drive's second phase may be delayed because some state and federal funds haven't materialized as expected. (IJ)
• A Santa Rosa school may not open for want of a sidewalk.  The sidewalk was to be built with redevelopment money. (Press Democrat)
• Cotati's ambitious downtown roundabout plan, which stirred up so much controversy, is also in doubt thanks to issues stemming from redevelopment funds. (Press Democrat)
• Sonoma County's roads are absolutely terrible, at least according to a map prepared by the county's Transportation and Public Works Department. Road maintenance is severely underfunded in Sonoma, and some activists are pushing hard for change. In that light, a proposed road maintenance property tax could do the trick. (Press Democrat, Petaluma360)
• Level of Service, or LOS, is an absolutely terrible way to measure how well a city street performs its many duties, as it focuses solely on moving cars - not people - swiftly along. (Streetsblog)

The SMART Area, Part 3: Mobility

Over the next few days I’ll be posting my impressions and comments regarding the San Rafael SMART Station Area Plan. It’s such a large, complicated, and potentially game-changing document that it needs more than just a single post. Today we tackle the interplay of cars, bikes, and pedestrians. So far, we’ve covered land use and parking, and the last post will cover buses and the future of the site.

The SMART Downtown Station Area is set in a car-centric environment, complete with an elevated freeway and its ramps, pedestrian barriers, dead street frontage, narrow sidewalks, and open lots. There is no traffic calming, little in the way of bicycle infrastructure, and a push to move more and more cars through. This is a transit-oriented development, deliberately focused around means of getting around that don’t include a car. While it does not address needed bus improvements, the Station Area Plan tackles the other issues by building needed infrastructure for walking and cycling. It takes a step back by altering the street network to accommodate more traffic, giving one San Rafael Planning Commissioner “heartburn”, but overall the plan is solid where it chooses to look.

Cars

Highway 101, built as an upgrade to the old Redwood Highway to speed cars to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, bisects San Rafael. Irving and Heatherton are functionally the frontage roads, one-way strips running north and south respectively, and Second and Third are the on and off ramps, running one-way east and west respectively. This poses immense problems for active living, as a glorified freeway ramp is no place to put a pedestrian or a bicycle.

Car lanes are 12 feet wide, as wide as a freeway lane, but facilitating speed. Timed lights to keep traffic moving and encourages driving at the speed limit but contributes to noise and the perception of danger. There are no traffic-calming measures that I can think of.

For a transit-oriented community this is problematic, but it is understandable given the geography. In most other cities, traffic is funnelled through specific arterials on a wide grid, though if there is a problem on one street, others nearby can soak up the spillover. San Rafael is the primary freeway entrance for Ross Valley, and the whole of downtown is only five blocks wide. Speeding 24,000 cars per day on and off the freeway is a huge challenge for San Rafael, and this is a way to address the problem.

With more density coming to this area, the Area Plan has proposed adding right-turn lanes off Heatherton to Third, increasing the outbound capacity and allowing the roads to keep flowing freely. Unfortunately, the plan proposes doing this while removing a crosswalk along Heatherton to prevent pedestrians from interfering with traffic flow. This is foolish in the extreme, despite the improved bus travel times. Most traffic through this area is pass-through, and there is more than enough capacity on Mission, Fifth, and Fourth to absorb the increase in westbound traffic from these projects. San Rafael needs to focus on calming Second and Third rather than simply pushing more cars through, especially here.

Bicycling

I remember reading a blog comment once to the effect of, “I’ve been car-free in Fairfax for years, but only because I have a bike.” Golden Gate Transit has somewhat thin service for being a car replacement so bicycle ownership is a must for the car-free, and this is almost as true in San Rafael as it is in Fairfax.

Improving the bike-unfriendly areas around San Rafael, especially under the freeway and along Second and Third, are absolutely essential to allow car-free travel around Marin, and the bike lanes included in the plan accomplish at least a bit by facilitating the bicycle connection between Irwin and the multi-use path behind the San Rafael Corporate Center. MCBC has called for a Class I bike lane (or multi-use path, what the rest of the country calls a cycletrack) on West Tamalpais instead of the planned bike lane on East Tamalpais. This is another good idea to be explored, as cycletracks would go a long way to promoting bicycling in all parts of Central Marin, and a good one on West Tamalpais could be a model.

Pedestrians

Walkability is the foundation of a livable neighborhood, a fact acknowledged by the Area Plan. Walking around the Transit Center is a pain, with missing crosswalks, long curb-cuts, and pedestrian barriers at key intersections. Walking under the freeway is unpleasant, especially at night, and the narrow sidewalks put the cars far too close to pedestrians. To solve this, the Area Plan calls for more crosswalks, removal of extraneous curb-cuts, and widening or adding sidewalks throughout the area.

Unfortunately, the most pressing pedestrian problem is handled in an astonishingly ham-fisted sort of way. When SMART arrives, it will be directly across Third from the Transit Center, and there are huge desire lines running between the two facilities. San Rafael, concerned that people would run across Third to catch their bus, wants to erect a pedestrian barrier along most of the length the station's Third Street side, forcing pedestrians to cross at either Heatherton or West Tamalpais, eliminating mid-block crossings from East Tamalpais by commuters desperate to catch their bus. This is the opposite of pedestrian-friendly.

A far better solution would be to initiate a block-long crossing, starting 30 seconds after a train pulls up and lasting 45 seconds, during which time cars would be unable to turn right. As SMART will run only once every half-hour, it would not be too disruptive of bus and car traffic, and Heatherton traffic would still be able to move south during the crossing. To prevent commuter desperation, buses should be instructed to wait a short time after the train arrives, and SMART itself should have real-time departure information displayed in the train for buses at whatever its next stop is.

Overall, the mobility issues addressed by the Station Area Plan are quite large and are handled competently.  Beyond the bizarre pedestrian barrier, removed crosswalk, and new right-turn lane at Third and Heatherton, walkability and bikeability are improved dramatically under this plan.  In our fourth and final installment, we'll tackle buses and the future of the area.

Mid-Week Links: The Right Kind of Parking

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/34514767 w=620&h=349] So people sometimes think I'm a geek; I bore them to death with talk about LOS and bike lanes and units per acre, but when so much can be done with just bike parking I can hardly shut up.  Marin, despite its cycling culture, has very little bicycle parking in its downtown cores.  Replacing one car space every other block with bike parking in downtown San Rafael, for example, would add 50 bicycle parking spaces for only 5 car spaces.  As well, putting the bikes where drivers need good sight lines would make the program even better.

The North Bay

SMART construction has officially begun!  For the moment it's just survey teams and a sign, but the $103 million contract has sparked the first construction work of the project.  Construction will be from Santa Rosa's Jenning's Road station, added back in during contract negotiations and now relocated to Guerneville Road, to the Civic Center.  Meanwhile, RepealSMART is turning to paid signature-gatherers to qualify for what they claim is the qualifying target: 14,902. They've acknowledged they wouldn't be able to meet either of the two higher proposed numbers: 30,000 or 39,000. (Press Democrat, IJ, Business Journal, Watch Sonoma County)

• Tea party protesters interrupted a One Bay Area public planning meeting in Santa Rosa.  I hope Marin's meeting will be more civil. (Press Democrat)
• There is a problem with the Wincup development in Corte Madera.  Apparently the parking garage is going where a new freeway ramp - part of the Greenbae Interchange Project - is supposed to go, and TAM isn't happy. (Pacific Sun)
• Larkspur has a pedestrian bridge design. (Patch)
• BioMarin is expanding to the San Rafael Corporate Center, lowering the city's office vacancy rate from 40% to 12%. While office employees only support 4 square feet of retail, it is a chance to build more street life in eastern downtown. (Patch)
• The Novato pot club has done what the Fairfax club could not: survive. Although neighbors and city and federal officials want to shut down the club, owners are soldiering on after winning an eviction suit from their landlord, who complained there was marijuana smoking on the premises. (IJ)
• The driver of an Aston Martin caused a four-car crash on Highway 101 after losing control of his vehicle and clipping another driver's car.  The highway closed for 30 minutes. (IJ)
• Larkspur Landing could get parking fees on 160 of its "prime" parking spots for only $65 per month.  GGT is mulling the move to help close the Bridge District's 5-year, $87 million deficit, although the program would only amount to $625,000 over that time frame. (IJ)
• A cyclist severely injured himself on Alexander Avenue on Wednesday when he lost control of his bike and crashed into a guardrail.  Sausalito wants to redesign Alexander Avenue to make it safer for the many cyclists who use it to get to and from the Golden Gate Bridge. (IJ)
• Terrapin Crossroads lives, and it's heading to the Canal to take over the site of Seafood Peddler. The approval process is expected to be handled administratively, as Seafood Peddler already had most of the appropriate permits. (Pacific Sun, IJ)
• Design and zoning issues could become a political issue in San Anselmo now that Councilman Jeff Kroot is involved in a spat with a neighbor over a planned expansion of Kroot's home. (IJ)
• High-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes are not financially viable on Highway 101 through Marin, according to a TAM study, without upping the carpool requirement to 3 passengers. It's just as well, as HOT lanes would cripple any casual carpooling initiative in the county. (IJ, The Greater Marin)
• Healdsburg wants to fix an old bridge for $12 million, but don't have the money to do it.  Federal officials are skeptical of the plan and appear to prefer replacing the bridge for $25 million. (Press-Democrat)

Mid-Week Links: Bike for Your Life

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/33954621 w=620&h=349] The most baffling thing about Marin is how unbikeable its thoroughfares are.  Sir Francis Drake, Second & Third Streets, Miller Avenue, Redwood Boulevard - they're all sorely lacking in bicycle amenities.  We shunt our cyclists onto side roads or put down sharrows but it's honestly not enough.  The video above highlights the progress made in New York City, and they've done absolutely spectacular things in the past five years.  But why should they have all the fun?  Marin County invented the mountain bike and Safe Routes to School.  Our cafes are hangouts for spandex-clad biker gangs.  We have the culture, we have the towns, but we just need the will.

We've done the flashy projects - CalPark Tunnel, the Novato north-south path - but they're out of the way.  Instead, I want to bike down Miracle Mile and Third Street.  I want to lock my bike to something other than a tree in San Rafael.  I want to feel safe biking in Tam Valley and on Delong Avenue.  Marin is still one of the best places to live, but New York is showing us up.  In 2012, let's show New York what we're made of.

SMART

SMART featured prominently in the news this week.  Rohnert Park officially (wait, no, unofficially) moved its station north to be closer to housing and commercial development, which allowed SMART to reintroduce the Atherton Avenue station [Patch] to the IOS.  SMART had cut Atherton because it relies on MTC funding, which requires that an average of 2,200 housing units to be zoned for within a half-mile of the system's stations.  Atherton has very few housing units nearby, as it is located to bring workers to the Fireman's Fund office park, and so lowered SMART below the minimum TOD threshold.  Rohnert Park's move added enough housing units to the system that Atherton could be added back in, and that's good news for everyone.  (Patch, IJ, Press Democrat)

In other news, SMART has rehired their old CFO to replace her own replacement.  Erin McGrath is taking over once David Heath, who was fired for undisclosed reasons, leaves on Friday.  As well, the District wants to run shuttle buses on the deferred parts of its line, from Santa Rosa to Cloverdale and San Rafael to Larkspur.  This would duplicate current Sonoma County and Golden Gate bus service, but the District is in talks with GGT about coordination, raising hopes that they won't waste money creating a sixth bus service in two counties. (IJ)

Marin County

• Ross Valley's Flood Control District has been awarded $7.66 million to retrofit Phoenix Lake into a water detention facility, decreasing the odds of flooding downstream. (IJ)
• San Rafael will spend $213k to repair a bump in Anderson Drive that slows down cars, although I think the bump is more of a feature than a bug. (IJ)
• Marin County supervisors have discretionary funds, and they're giving away $38,650 at the end of the year.  Prince William County, Maryland, has something similar but is considering ending the practice. (IJ, Washington Post)
• Marin has pumped another $1 million into litigation against SAP and Deloitte Consulting for the wretched accounting system they installed for the County. (IJ)
• The County needle-exchange program will not expand as planned. Congressional Republicans reinstated a ban on federal funding for needle exchanges, meaning AIDS testing and prevention money from the CDC will not be forthcoming. (IJ)
• A four-car collision on the Golden Gate Bridge resulted in no serious injuries, but shut down all northbound lanes for 30 minutes. (IJ)
• More bizarrely, a driver ran a car through a Sausalito living room.  No injuries were reported. (IJ)
• A third crash this week came from Novato, where a driver crashed into a telephone pole along Highway 101. (Patch)
• The Ross Valley Sanitary District will borrow up to $1.5 million to fund repairs and upgrades to the valley's waste water systems. The District plans to replace 200 miles of pipe at the glacial rate of 2 miles per year. (IJ)
• Caltrans shut part of the Manzanita Park and Ride lot due to high tides, but reopened it on Monday.  It's unclear why the tides would be a problem last week, but not this week. (IJ)
• Doyle Drive's Phase I is almost complete, and it will include a temporary signalized intersection. It will be interesting to see if the traffic gets as bad as people think it will. (Spotswood)

The Greater Marin

• What does it take to make good downtown retail?  A bit of rule-bending. (PlaceShakers)
• Transit agencies should sell personal mobility if they want to compete with the car, the ultimate mobility machine. (Human Transit)
• Mode share: Apparently, teens rely on cars if they live in spread-out, rural environments.  But the town in question, Owens Sound, ON, has room to improve, as it seems to have little bike infrastructure and only a roundabout bus system. (Owen Sound Sun Times)
• Environmental considerations have been cut from the federal TIFIA transportation loan program, part of a deal cut by Sen. Barbara Boxer to get Republican support for the transportation funding extension.  The considerations may still be amended into the bill, as it has not yet passed the Senate. (Huffington Post)
• Eliminating California state funding of school transportation funding is made at the expense of broadly-spread rural school districts that need busing but can't afford it on their own. (Sacramento Bee)
• The City of Sonoma wants to ban "formula [i.e., chain] stores" after a Staples moved into town, but the town doesn't seem to be addressing the zoning codes that encourage the blandness they want to ban.  The Council is deeply divided on the issue, which will be taken up at the next council meeting. (Sonoma News)
• Work to widen Highway 101 in Sonoma has sucked up $720 million so far and needs another $250 million to get through the Novato Narrows, all for more developments like Deer Park and Hanna Ranch.  SMART will cost $280 million less at full build-out. (Press Democrat)

Mid-Week Links: Happy Hours

Wonderful news!  The Greater Marin (i.e., me) will be throwing a Happy Hour at the Marin Brewing Company on Tuesday, Dec. 27th, at 7pm!  Come by, talk transit, and enjoy Marin's home brews.  Until then, though, a lot has happened in the County, so on to the links:

Marin County

• Negotiations between Marin Transit (MT) and GGT will continue for another two years.  MT believes GGT is overcharging by $2.5 million per year to operate its local Marin routes. (IJ)
• RepealSMART has gathered 7,500 signatures for its repeal effort, although how many signatures are required is still up in the air: RepealSMART says it needs only 15,000 but under some formulae it would need double that number.  The deadline for signatures is January 27. (Press Democrat)
• A new bikeway opened in Novato between the north and south halves of the city, allowing bikers to avoid the 101 shoulder. (IJ)
• Performance parking isn't performing well in San Francisco, forcing broader spreads between cheap and expensive blocks. SFPark disputes the idea that it won't work, citing the fact that the zones are still just pilot projects, and new ones at that.  Sausalito is running a similar program in its downtown. (Greater Greater Washington, Streetsblog)
• SMART could lead to traffic and safety problems at San Rafael's Bettini Transit Center, according to the Golden Gate Bridge District.  Officials cited concerns regarding transferring passengers crossing Third Street and bus delays caused by passing trains. (IJ)
• SMART sold $191 million in construction bonds this past week, netting $171 million for the project.  The money will be kept in escrow until the RepealSMART effort is resolved. (Press Democrat, IJ, Patch)
• Bus service will be restored between Sir Francis Drake High and West Marin next semester.  Coastal residents sought the route after Marin Transit officials eliminated the extremely underused Route 62. (IJ)
• County planners panned development plans at the Golden Gate Seminary in Strawberry, saying the proposed 117 new residential units were "so out of sync" with the seminary's 1984 Master Plan they "cannot imagine approving" the development. (IJ)
• Canal residents demanded better lighting, sidewalks, and crosswalks in the neighborhood at a march last Wednesday.  San Rafael city planners said they had received no specific complaint. (IJ)
• Caltrans will fix a sinking Highway 101 overpass in Corte Madera with $1.2 million in state funds.  The money was accompanied by $28 million for  SMART construction. (IJ)
• "She was a very special lady who touched many lives... She will be greatly missed."  Jomar Lococo died on Highway 101 as her husband tried to avoid another driver that had drifted into their lane. (Patch)

The Greater Marin

• On-time performance is extremely difficult for bus systems to achieve.  Whatever my gripes about GGT, at least they have this down. (Transit Manager)
• The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) only works when the right questions are asked, as Mountain View discovered in their draft Environmental Impact Report.  As it turns out, building houses near jobs actually is good for the environment. (Atlantic Cities)

Mid-Week Links: Buffering

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/20302720 w=620&h=349] MCBC does wonderful work on bike paths, getting the whole county connected, but it neglects the needs of better on-street bike lanes and what they could do to improve the streetscape for all users.

Marin County

Novato's city council meeting Monday night was four hours of non-stop affordable housing policy excitement. In sum, the city will allow second units to be built at market rates but, citing concerns over current residents of illegal second units, will not give amnesty to those illegal units. The fee to build the second units will come down, and the city will look into how to encourage second unit construction. The city will not implement an affordable housing fee on commercial developers, known as a commercial linkage fee, but did not rule out exploring it in the next housing element in two years. (City of Novato, IJ)

• Fairfax is concerned that expanding White Hill Middle School will add more traffic to the town's roads. Unfortunately, the school's remote location 1.5 miles from downtown means mitigation will be tough. (IJ)
• Once again, a car accident closed a direction of Highway 101. This time, all southbound lanes were closed. Only minor injuries were reported. (IJ)
• Marin Transit will reevaluate its Novato bus lines over the next week to determine how to improve ridership. Ideas include extending the 49 and combining the 51 and 52. GGT should work with Novato to improve access, perception, and urban form in the area. (News Pointer)
• It's official: Gary Phillips is mayor of San Rafael, Gary Lion is mayor of Mill Valley, and Denise Athas is mayor of Novato. (IJ)
• San Rafael extended a moratorium on opening new group homes of seven or more people. (IJ, Patch)
• Another week, another pedestrian struck in Novato. The man suffered minor injuries while crossing De Long Avenue near Sherman Avenue, a block from downtown. (IJ)
• Apparently Marinites like their government and are willing to pay to keep it going at current levels. (IJ)
• Safe Routes to School has dramatically altered the behavior of students in Marin, shifting 8% of single-student car trips to walking, biking, transit, or carpooling. (IJ; TAM report available here [pdf] on page 183)
• Mill Valley is testing a way to electronically comment at city council meetings, which can be done here. A certain blogger you know will probably take full advantage. (IJ, City of Mill Valley)
• San Anselmo is showing its community colors by supporting a woman who has had a particularly tragic year: foreclosure, breast cancer, and the tragic death of her husband while on vacation. (IJ)
• Cutting trees is a big issue in San Geronimo Valley, where tree-cutting fees are up to 30 times what they are in incorporated Marin. (IJ)
• The eviction of Fairfax's medical marijuana dispensary will go forward. (IJ)
• The Transportation Authority of Marin approved about $1 million in bike/ped projects at its last meeting. (IJ)
• Peaking of bike/ped projects, the IJ editorial board wonders whether the $15 million bike/ped bridge over Sir Francis Drake Boulevard is worth the money. (IJ)
• Just to be clear: Stand Up for Neighborly Novato doesn't like the idea of housing at Hanna Ranch. If you want to comment on the sprawl development, please do: Novato City Council has scheduled discussion on the project for December 13. (IJ, Patch)
• The runway at Novato's Gnoss Field could be extended without major environmental impact. (IJ)
• SMART and other projects are now evaluated under a cost-benefit and target analysis from MTC. The results were mixed. (Press Democrat)

The Greater Marin

• San Francisco will soon allow drivers to pay for parking via cell phone. Since Sausalito is emulating the city's performance parking practices, might cell phone parking come to Marin soon as well? (SFGate)
• Cotati's HOV lanes are now open to vehicles. (North Bay Business Journal)
• The suburban office park - a la Marin Commons, Fireman's Fund and Hanna Ranch - is disappearing. (Times)
• Marin is better poised than most to take advantage of the shift away from suburban office parks and towards centralized development: with the SMART train, strong downtowns and some local political will, commerce might still look to Marin to relocate, even if not in the typical places.
• ABAG and MTC have been awarded a $5 million federal grant to promote sustainable communities. (Transportation Nation)
• Population growth has slowed dramatically in California. While the state grew at a rate of 0.7% per annum, Marin grew only by 0.53%.
• In planning there is a concept known as Level of Service, or LOS, which is widely used and places auto traffic at the top of the planning pyramid.  In San Francisco, that metric is being challenged at last. (The Atlantic Cities)
• SANDAG has released a Sustainable Communities Strategy under Senate Bill 375.  How long until ABAG does the same? (ClimatePlan)

Not Just Bedrooms Anymore

Slowly, Marin County has transformed from a bedroom community to a working destination, yet residents still view their county otherwise.  It’s time to change. The old stereotype for a Marinite is easy to trace.  Looking for a new life, someone moves to San Francisco.  She’s young and vivacious, she enjoys the city and all its grit.  When she finally makes it big, though, it’s time to settle down, and there’s no better place to settle down than Marin County.  She keeps commuting to the City but lives in Mill Valley with the family.  Her friends and neighbors have similar stories, and so southbound 101 is a mess every day.

True though narrative is for thousands, it neglects a key fact: more people commute to Marin than commute from it every day.  We have become a destination, and that has implications for how we approach the form and development of our cities.

The Destination

In digging through the commuting numbers, there are some surprising finds.  Marin residents were estimated to make 60,051 commute trips to other counties every day in 2010, while residents of other counties were estimated to make 87,573 work trips to Marin every day.  That means that 45% more people commute to Marin than from Marin every day.  The only counties that had a net in-commute from Marin were San Francisco and San Mateo; all others gave more commuters than they got.

This shows up in Highway 101 load numbers.  Through Sonoma, the load peaks through Santa Rosa but declines sharply until leveling off near the Sonoma/Marin county line.  The sharpest increase is at Novato, which adds 79,000 cars per day, and peaks at San Pedro Road.  After that, 101 shows a sharp decline in load to the bridge, from this point shedding 82,000 southbound vehicles per day.  If we include Novato and Terra Linda, 101 is only 25,000 vehicles heavier when it leaves the county than when it enters from Sonoma.

(When we try to include 580, things get a bit trickier because of the lack of temporal granularity in the available Caltrans numbers, but this quick-and-dirty analysis shows where the principal destinations in Marin are: San Rafael, Highway 131, and Bridge/Donahue.)

The Response

So what?  Marin is a destination; what does that have to do with form and transit?  It starts when county leaders and residents change how they think about their home.  Golden Gate Transit, for example, has strong commuter links to San Francisco, but doesn’t coordinate morning departures from the City, and its links to the East Bay are woefully inefficient.  As well, SMART is denigrated as a “train to nowhere” because it stops in San Rafael, which should be seen for the insult it is.  Altering this perspective would lead to three big changes in urban form and transit.

First, we would encourage our downtowns as places to work, not just play and live, and we would find new places to build them.  At the moment, office development focuses on suburban office parks, such as Marin Commons.  Downtowns, meanwhile, are left as alternatives to the mall, quaint places that serve residents’ shopping needs rather than rich and active working destinations.  Building up downtowns as working destinations by building offices - government, as in Novato, or otherwise - would give retailers and restaurants all-day clientele.  Even small town centers, like Fairfax, have space for appropriately-sized office development.

Second, we would improve our inward transit links to serve the transit-oriented and carless residents of the rest of the Bay Area.  Currently, only 2.4% of in-commuters use transit.  Although much of this is likely due to perception rather than actual service, the long headways and lack of inbound commuter coordination is a needless barrier.  We already boast 20-50 minute travel times from the City and 30 minute travel times from BART, but the atrocious state of inbound routes shows that GGT hasn't even thought about accommodating inbound commuters.

Third, we would start to redesign our cities as places to stay rather than simply pass through.  The most egregious symbol of the pass-through mentality is the Second-Third Street corridor.  The timed lights, speeding one-way traffic, and narrow sidewalks implicitly tell pedestrians that they aren’t wanted there, deadening the streetscape and what developments could come.  Almost as bad are Novato Boulevard, Tam Junction and South Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Marin will never supplant San Francisco, but its cities can capitalize on their role as satellites of that regional anchor.  Strong towns would decrease commute times and encourage transit use; strengthen government coffers; and bolster the small businesses that call downtown their home.  Marin has already moved in this direction; it's just a matter of whether it can capitalize on its success.

Mid-Week Links: Problem/Solution

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dNMGDVBtQc] As any company can tell you, the product is only as successful as the marketing, and Los Angeles took it to heart.  Not only was designing a good transit "product" important, but selling it to the public was immediately useful.  Other agencies would do well to do the same.

Marin

• A sprawling development of 12 homes in Santa Venetia has been rejected by the Marin County Planning Commission.  The issue goes to the Board of Supervisors next. (IJ)
• Druid Heights, an alternative community "whose members were dedicated to radical artistic, philosophical, spiritual, political and sexual experimentation," is profiled by the IJ on news that it qualifies as an official historical site.  The irony is lost on the writer. (IJ)
• Novato joins Corte Madera in considering a pot club ban. (IJ)
• Downtown Novato's Business Improvement District is doing good work to make the street a commercial destination. (Advance)
• In what seems to be a weekly occurrence, all northbound lanes were closed on Highway 101 due to a crash.  Two people were injured. (Patch)
• George Lucas wants to turn Lucas Valley's Grady Ranch into anoffice complex for 340 employees in a manner similar to Skywalker Ranch. (IJ, Patch)
• Marin's $50 million renovation of its new Marin Commons space is slated to begin next year.  A government anchor tenant is a savior for the location. (BizJournal)
• Marin local businesses felt the touch of this year's surging shopping season, posting a fabulous Shop Local Saturday. (IJ)
• The Marin City Transit Center got a $500,000 facelift and finally opened for business.  Bike parking and an information kiosk were apparently less important than trees, and will go in in the next couple of weeks. (IJ)
• This year might be the last that Marinites will be able to sled in downtown San Rafael thanks to budget cuts (IJ)
• Like the library?  Love infrastructure?  San Anselmo is seeking applicants for its Capital Program Committee and Library Board. (Town of San Anselmo)
• A driver struck and injured a cyclist in San Anselmo. (IJ)
• More inconclusive reports on the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. affects on wildlife. (IJ)
• SMART may be controversial, but two of the most beloved bits of Marin infrastructure - the Ferries and Bridge - were controversial in their day, too. (IJ)
• Polling suggests that SMART still enjoys strong support, but there are questions about its methodology. (IJ)
• Tam Valley is home to a dangerous and well-traveled intersection, but one of the few that lacks sidewalks or good pedestrian and bicycling amenities.  Kathy McLeod wants to change that. (Patch)
• Café Gratitude is closing or selling all its NorCal locations, including the one in San Rafael, but it still totally wants you to buy its stuff.  The closures are a result of multiple employee lawsuits. (SFist)
• The Sausalito Chamber of Commerce is moving into its recently-purchased mixed-use building on Bridgeway.  I wonder if an employee will get the top-floor apartment... (Marinscope)
• Are you prepared for the Big One? (SFist)

The Greater Marin

• Vancouver is pursuing urban planning that makes people healthier and fights obesity.  How?  By getting people out of cars and onto sidewalks, bikes, buses and trains. (Globe and Mail)
• Although California High-Speed Rail is undergoing some tough times, the short-sightedness of governors elsewhere means the project gets their funding. (SFist, New York Times)
• Readers should know that zoning is important for the future and form of any city.  How important?  Edward McMahon celebrates 85 years of zoning regulations by looking at its philosophical basis, while Stephen Smith looks at the origins of zoning: New York progressivism.  (Urban Land Institute, Market Urbanism)
• The exurb, of which the Bay Area has blessedly little, is not coming back. For Sonoma and other outer counties, the future rests in their own economic vibrancy. (New York Times)
• Lastly, there is a pie cake, and it's called a Cherumple.  This "dessert version of the turducken" weighs around 21 pounds.  Bring friends. (Boing Boing)

Larkspur Bike Bridge Isn't Bad

Tomorrow, TAM will solicit comments on the misleadingly-named Central Marin Ferry Connection Multi-Use Pathway Project, a bike and pedestrian bridge from the Larkspur Landing SMART station over Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.  This project, the largest near-term project in the city, would connect with the existing path across Corte Madera Creek and under Highway 101.  A second phase would extend the bridge across the creek, although there are no concrete plans at the moment for this phase.

The area around the Greenbrae Interchange is a pedestrian wasteland, but at least the planners in charge of the project made some nods to access, putting in a paved path beneath the interchange and small (less than 5-foot wide) sidewalks along the on and off ramps to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Still, it needs some dramatic improvements.  Apart from needed reforms of Larkspur Landing as a whole, the future SMART station and Cal Park Hill Tunnel need strong connections to points south and west.  Perched on a steep hill, the station site and tunnel exit are accessible only by a 7 minute circuitous route along Drake, Larkspur Landing Circle, and through parking lots.

The first phase of this project is a worthy bicycle investment.  Creating a coherent bicycle path along the 101 corridor would provide a backbone for the non-motorized transportation network in Marin, just as 101 provides a backbone for the motorized network.  Stairs and a crosswalk across Drake would be far less expensive but would force riders to dismount, diminishing the attractiveness of the just-completed Cal Park Hill Tunnel.  A bridge across the street would make the north-south connection seamless.  It wouldn’t demolish the rail trestle or interfere with that right-of-way, keeping the door open to rail expansion into South Marin, and it wouldn’t further deaden Drake, as there’s nothing to activate.

Those stairs, however, should still be planned to provide easy access between the SMART station and the north sidewalk.  Although they should not be built until the station goes in, building the bridge to allow for stairs would reduce costs later.

The second phase of construction, a new bike and pedestrian bridge across Corte Madera Creek, is not quite as worthy.  Improving the mixed-use crossing of Corte Madera Creek is already a part of the broader Greenbrae Interchange project; why spend millions on a duplicate effort?  The only improvement over the sidewalk would be a single jump from the hill to the south side of the creek, but the bridge’s alignment is not favorable.  Unless the railway trestle comes down (taking southern SMART expansion off the table for the foreseeable future), such a bridge will extend to the Greenbrae Boardwalk and away from the on-street cycle route.  Still, there are, as yet, no formal plans, so the second phase may not even come to fruition.

I’m typically opposed to pedestrian overpasses, as they deaden streetlife on busy streets, typically where streetlife is needed most.  They’re expensive alternatives to fixing the traffic that’s actually wrong with the city.  However, for the Greenbrae Interchange, an exception can be made.  The Interchange is at capacity, partially because of high demand for ferry travel, and a huge number of buses pass by along 101.  Downgrading the intersection to make it safe for pedestrians would hurt transit riders as well as vehicular traffic, without much benefit.  There is very little in the immediate vicinity, and very little room for improvement.  A bridge offers riders a far better experience than stairs and maintains the current interchange capacity without much loss in streetlife.

Fatal Roads

It's not often we get to see in such a stark way how dangerous our roads are.  Luckily, ITO World, a UK transportation information firm, has done it for us, mapping every road fatality in the US from 2001-2009.

Zooming in to Marin, there are a few patterns.  I count 27 deaths along Highway 101 in the county, with the worst part being right at the border, and 2 deaths on 580.  On surface streets, I have:

• 14 deaths in Novato, including a 9-year-old pedestrian girl on San Marin Drive in 2009
• 10 deaths in San Rafael, including an 81-year-old pedestrian woman on 3rd Street in 2007
• 3 deaths in San Anselmo
• 1 death in Ross, a pedestrian
• 1 death in Larkspur, a 53-year-old cyclist man near the ferry building in 2003
• 1 death in Corte Madera
• 2 deaths in Tiburon
• 1 death in Sausalito
• 2 deaths in Mill Valley, both motorcyclists
• 25 deaths in West Marin

Over 9 years, 89 people have died on the roads of Marin.  Most were in vehicles or motorcycles, but there were two bicyclists and a number of pedestrians that were killed.  We're doing better than a lot of places, but it serves as a fresh reminder that roads are far more dangerous than we often remember.  What do you see in this map?

Mid-Week Links: Divide and Conquer

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/16399180 w=601&h=338] We intuit it, but we don't always realize it: a busy street is a pedestrian-dead street.  That's why you never walk down lower Miller Avenue, or Third Street, or, if you can avoid it, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Marin

• A Marin City woman is facing eviction from her public housing for hosting her dying mother without prior approval.
• Food Truck Crush might be a permanent after-work fixture at the Larkspur Ferry.
• The split-lot fee saga continues, which County Supervisors continue to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis.
• Golden Gate Bridge workers are engaged in a rather heated renegotiation of their contract with the District.
• If SMART is repealed, the sales tax that funds the project will remain in place until all outstanding contracts and bonds are paid off.  Dick Spotswood doesn't think this is such a great deal.
• SMART supporters are reviving to fight the repeal effort.
• There's a fight afoot to prevent the San Rafael Airport from also hosting a recreation center.
• Plans to expand Ross Valley's White Hill Middle School have been approved.
• Redhill Shopping Center merchants are taking it in the gut as the beloved San Anselmo strip mall undergoes renovation and beautification.
• Larkspur's low-density infill development at Niven Nursery near the city's downtown is proceeding apace.
• Mill Valley loses a hardware store and a bit of its past.
• The Hanna Ranch sprawl project is set to go before the Novato City Council without affordable housing.  At least it has that going for it.
• Novato approved the design of its new city offices, with some caveats.

The Greater Marin

• Local transit agencies are urged to work together more closely ahead of an MTC-led push for a transit gas tax.
• If you commute by bus to the City, no doubt you know that the Transbay Terminal is gone.  What you may not know is that in its place will be a 61-story tower atop the new transit center along with a number of other fine projects.  Have some opinions?  Stop by San Francisco City Hall at 5:30 Thursday evening.
• Highway 101 widening around Rohnert Park will be completed this month, part of a $172 million widening scheme along the thoroughfare's Sonoma reaches.
• Looks like California High-Speed Rail will cost a helluva lot more than planned.  Atlantic Cities waxes sanguine on the subject, and Alon Levy looks at the cause of the cost overruns: cantankerous residents officials at either end of the line.
• Why do Congressional Republicans hate bikes?