I just got back from a trip to West Virginia that involved lots of fabulous people and no Internet access, so today's post on communicating bus timing will be delayed for a day or two. What I can give you, however, is something someone else made. Streetfilms has a fabulous video on sharing transit data in an open and standardized way and the wonderful things that can come of it. Golden Gate Transit doesn't have open data, at least not that I could see, and that dramatically hinders the capability of the entrepreneurial and tech-savvy to create customer-centered applications the agency may not even think of. This deserves more rumination, but the mini-documentary can speak for itself.[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/13764646 w=620&h=349]
Maximizing Golden Gate Transit: Wayfinding from A to B
Marin isn’t known as a transit-oriented place, despite its deep green ideology. While fewer than 45% of San Franciscans drive alone to work, a full 74% of Marinites do. In other places, low transit ridership is due in part to the opaque nature of bus routes and schedules, and GGT is certainly opaque. What might it do to become more transparent?
The first problem is one of bus routes. Many riders, if they don’t know a bus route, don’t know where they’ll end up if they board the bus. Unlike a rail-based system, riders can’t look at the rails and see where they go. Only specialized knowledge, gleaned from studying the bus map or utilizing wayfinding tools like 511.org, would allow an inexperienced user to utilize the bus system by feel.
Transit centers present a special difficulty because of the plethora of options. If I want to go from Sausalito to the Seminary Drive bus pad, I first need to check to see what bus numbers depart from Sausalito, then what routes look like they might serve Seminary Drive. The 70 and 80 have asterisks next to them so I don’t know if they’ll come by Sausalito. The 10 might, too, but it also has an asterisk that says it might not serve Seminary. The 22 probably does, but getting back I might need to get on someplace else because it looks as though it veers off someplace near… Forget it, I’m taking the cab.
This should not be so hard! I look at maps like this every day in a much more complicated bus network and this confused me. Any route that hits Seminary Drive from Sausalito doesn’t even always make it to Sausalito or Seminary Drive. I only know this because of side notes that say, “Check timetables.” On top of that, there isn’t an easy way to say that every X minutes a bus departs Sausalito for Seminary Drive.
What if I don’t want to go to Seminary Drive but want to see where I can go from Sausalito? I’d know the end points but not the stops in between without studying the map to find the small numbers and make sure the tiny color lines match up with the numbers’ coloring. Knowing where to go has turned from easy to highly technical, and this is only a small transit center; San Rafael would be significantly worse.
Without dramatically altering the routes to be more consistent, good graphic design can help lower the barriers to bus usage significantly. One of the best ways to address wayfinding is what is known as a “spider map”, a concept widely used in London’s bus system. It takes the jumbled mess of bus lines near a Tube station and charts them out to their ends, with major stops marked.
It does this in a cartogram, rather than a geographic map. By removing the geographic data and showing only the most important stops, the map can most effectively highlight the most useful service data. Differing line colors or patterns show visually the various exceptions to the rules, such as partial or peak-only service, and general trends of service, such as which “trunk” the line goes along or bus headway. This grants the bus system the same clarity as a subway system and visually associates the lowly bus with the ease and comfort of rapid transit.
Making buses work for casual riders is a perennial problem. Even here in Washington, DC, I know many people that live here months or years without ever boarding a bus. Understanding the bus system is seen as Deep Knowledge of the system’s otherwise impenetrable black box. Yet in Marin, the bus is our only mass transit option. It is imperfect, but it is comprehensive, and converting a driver to the bus will require it to be much more than the confusing map of seemingly random lines it currently is.
This addresses casually knowing how to get someplace, but knowing when to show up for your bus is still a problem, one we’ll address next week.
The Theory: SMART to San Francisco
Building a rail line to San Francisco is the Holy Grail for many in the commuting public. By 2035, there will be an estimated 80,000 commute trips across the Golden Gate Bridge every day, and both San Francisco and the SMART district counties could be well-served by a rail line going across the Golden Gate Bridge. It sounds like a fabulous idea, but would it actually be worth the expense? Let’s pencil this out.
SMART, presumably, would run along the old NWP railroad tracks to Sausalito, duplicating the old rail route. From there, would proceed as the old BART plan did, tunneling through the Marin Headlands to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, becoming a subway thereafter to run under Geary Boulevard before finally terminating at either the San Francisco Caltrain station or the Transbay Transit Center.
The Marin section would cut through Larkspur and Corte Madera, running at surface, bypass downtown Mill Valley and most of Sausalito before diving beneath the hills. Larkspur to Sausalito costs would likely be higher than the rest of the rail line, as the old rails have been torn up for trails. Given the cost of renovating the Alto Tunnel as well, a cost of $174 million – $20 million per mile – is not unreasonable. The fact that this would run through some very low-density residential neighborhoods, however, would likely mean significant neighborhood opposition. Running along Highway 101 would be significantly more expensive, as there is no single right-of-way for SMART to operate with, and there is no freeway median for the train to run down.
Sausalito to San Francisco would be a major undertaking. The Marin Headlands present a major tunnel project, and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge would be a huge engineering endeavor. Since all construction would be new and involve a tunneling project, from this point on the project would cost around $150,000 between $500 million and $1 billion per mile. The line would continue on the BART alignment once it reached the city, hitting its first station at the Presidio, serving Industrial Light and Magic, before tunneling to Geary. Total cost for this segment would be between $3 billion and $6 billion.
The Geary Boulevard alignment is important for this plan. Muni bus service along the Geary route is over capacity and is the busiest bus route in the Bay Area. The neighborhood has begged Muni for a subway but to no avail, as costs are extremely prohibitive, but from a transit perspective the project would be worthwhile. Here, SMART has a choice. It could stop at a Geary Boulevard transfer station, probably on Arguello or Masonic and allow passengers to transfer to Muni, or it could continue onward in the Muni tunnel.
There are costs to either choice. Forcing passengers to transfer to Muni far from the Financial District would make the route less attractive to potential riders, but partnering with Muni to build the subway would be extremely expensive. Despite this, the odds of actually building the subway would increase if Muni were to shoulder the cost with another transit agency, and the intra-San Francisco passengers would help to offset some of the cost to SMART. If SMART chooses to go on, it would proceed along Geary with stops along the way until Market Street. The cost for this segment would be around $330 million between $1.1 and $2.2 billion.
At Market, SMART again faces a decision. It could proceed along the Central Subway to the Caltrain terminal, requiring express rails to be put in at considerable cost. It could proceed forward to the Transbay Transit Center at an even more considerable cost, or it could stop at Union Square, allowing passengers to transfer to the Central Subway or BART and finish their trips. The cost of the crossing under Market would likely be at least $1 billion but would provide a significant improvement in service to passengers, allowing a single rail ride from Santa Rosa to California’s High Speed Rail network, Caltrain, and a number of regional buses.
The total cost of a San Rafael to Transbay Transit Center line, using these numbers, is $2.5 billion between $5.3 and $9.6 billion.
The problem for this line is that ridership just is not there. Already, 28% of commutes to San Francisco from Marin are made by transit. If SMART’s numbers hold out through a whole system, only another 10% of ridership – about 8,000 – would shift to the train. This would bring Marin in line with the mode share for San Mateo-San Francisco commuting at a total cost of $147,000 $400,000 per new rider, minimum. To make it as cost-effective as SMART’s initial operating segment, 40,000 new riders per day would have to switch, an unrealistically high number without a significant change to growth patterns in the Bay Area an astronomically high number for Marin.
Building SMART to San Francisco would be nice, but in a world of limited resources it would be a massive waste of funds. For that money, Golden Gate Transit could improve its bus system such that the towns it serves could begin to focus on transit-oriented development, SMART could extend to Sausalito, and there would be plenty of money left over for bike lanes, sidewalks, and a second track and electrification of the SMART route, and that only gets us through half the money. Unless costs come down, a San Francisco SMART should stay strictly theoretical.
EDIT: After some off-line comments, I realized I had grossly underestimated the cost of subway construction without tearing up Geary, and updated the costs to reflect that.
Car Commuting Costs Marin Billions
Marin’s commuting workforce travels quite a distance for work, 11.5 miles each way on average, thanks in part to its relatively suburban character. Although most would say such a commute isn’t terrible, commuting even that far is a massive financial loss to everyone involved, and Marin’s economy suffers for it.
Financial blogger Mr. Money Mustache recently penned a fantastic piece on the true cost of commuting (which I truly recommend) and found that an 18 mile commute, roughly from downtown San Rafael to Market Street, costs around $75,000 over the course of a decade and wastes roughly 1.3 working years of time. He factors in the IRS cost of $0.51 per mile in car depreciation, gas, and the like and assumes that it could be reinvested at about 5% interest. This is crazy, and that’s just for one person.
How much time and money is lost to commuting alone in Marin? The average drive-alone Marinite travels 11.46 miles to work, the distance from Petaluma to Novato. After taking into account a bit of tolling and parking, this average joe spends $3,800 and 24 working days on his commute each year. If he valued his time as much as his employer, that lost time is worth another $6,500. This works out to almost $50,000 in lost wealth and 7 wasted months over a decade. As a county, we spend $565 million every year to commute alone, and every decade we lose an astounding $7.3 billion in wealth and $9.5 billion worth of time.
Hearing these numbers, you’re probably thinking of abandoning your place in Sleepy Hollow and finding someplace nice in Russian Hill, or you’re worried I’ll want to make Grant Avenue a satellite Financial District. Don’t worry. I’m not advocating emptying out Marin, or turning Novato into Oakland, but I want to point out the immense, direct costs of investing so heavily in car-centered infrastructure. Each 1% of the commuting populace that drives alone rather than paying down a mortgage costs Marin’s economy $106.4 million every decade.
Infill development is one way out of this mess. By bringing workers and jobs closer together, Marinites will be able to save time and money if they want to drive, to the tune of $255 per mile closer to work, and will be more likely to bike or walk to work. These don’t need to be monstrous apartment buildings or affordable housing, but there are enough redundant parking garages and vacant lots to provide a healthy amount of space without damaging the fabric and culture of our towns.
The other way out is through improved transit investments. Although travel by transit is often no faster, and sometimes slower, than driving, that time can be put to more productive use than simply driving through stop-and-go traffic on 101, and transit is almost always cheaper than driving. Switching from driving to taking the wifi-equipped 101 bus to San Francisco, for example, can save a Novato commuter up to $11,000 per year in parking fees, tolls and vehicle wear-and-tear.
These are the discussions Marin should have about its future. How can we boost alternative transportation? How can we intelligently promote infill development? These are also the discussions we should have with our families. Personally I’d rather have $11,000 at the end of the year than the convenience of being totally flexible with when I can leave the office.
We often simply accept the commutes we’re given as foregone conclusions and don’t count the ways they hurt our wallets and our time; if we do reexamine our commute, it’s often with the time horizon of a month or a year. It’s high time we started to look at things a little more broadly.
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Commuting statistics used for the above information is from Change in Motion from December, 2008, by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Mode share and commuter numbers are the 2006 observed base. If you would like to see my work, you can download the spreadsheet I made here. If I made any particularly egregious mathematical errors, do let me know in the comments.
Public Access and Openness Is a Win-Win-Win
This November, Marin County residents will be asked to vote in six council elections, three district elections, and one mayoral election on top of eight ballot initiatives. There are 40 people running for 22 positions and there have been debates in most of the races. Not one is available online on-demand, and at least one wasn’t even recorded. This, in the most tech-savvy part of the country, is unacceptable.
Most debates happen during the work day, when a typical voter is at work with their nose to the grindstone. The first Novato council debate, for example, took place on a Friday morning, as did the first San Rafael mayoral debate. Night time debates often aren’t much better, scheduled early in the evening when most are still coming home.
The Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM) and Novato Public Access typically record events, but rather than put them on YouTube or their own sites, they keep them for pre-scheduled reruns online. If it’s already in a digital format, why lock it up?
Not only does this throw up an unnecessary barrier to voters but it makes life significantly more difficult for news outlets, especially blogs. As a blogger, I cannot embed, reference, cut up, sample or refer to specific bits of the debate without first creating my own recordings of their recordings, and the IJ and Patch can’t either. Instead, we reference the parts that we think are interesting in pieces about the debates, leaving readers’ interests by the wayside. If we want to quote someone’s debate answer after the reruns have stopped, we’re out of luck.
If debates were online, they could be used on any website at any time. Candidates could post video of their success and their opponent’s gaffe, TV and radio reporters could use the video on their shows without the expense of sending a news team, hosts get their logo everywhere the video is referenced, and voters get exposed to the voices and faces of people they wouldn’t otherwise think about. This could be a win for everyone.
Candidate debates are a vital part of the democratic process. They enable us to contrast competing perspectives, allow us to get a read on candidates’ knowledge, and serve as a proxy forum for the major issues of the day. In Marin, we are grappling major and contentious issues that will shape the county for decades: SMART, affordable housing, pension reform, and downtown revitalization. Knowing where our candidates stand informs the debate and informs the voter, so that everyone better knows where our County is going.
SMART Money Part II: The Myth and Allure of Caltrain North
Dick Spotswood is a supporter of SMART and an optimist regarding its success, but his insistence that it could function with the same form as Caltrain shows a lack of understanding of how either system must work. Back in July, Spotswood argued:
When in Oceanside, [former general manager Lillian] Hames' crew should have walked across the depot to ride Coaster, the excellent passenger rail line linking the San Diego County coast. There, they'd find an off-the-shelf commuter railroad using high-capacity cars that are America's standard.
They would work perfectly in the North Bay hauled by environment-friendly Tier Four locomotives… It's all proven technology. Think Caltrain on San Francisco's Peninsula.
This, he says, would result in $120 million in savings and provide twice the capacity over the Sharryo DMUs SMART ended up buying. The savings would come from:
- Using non-customized trains
- Cutting specialized track work
- Cutting specialized signaling systems
- Cutting high loading platforms
This is simply bonkers. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has rules of crashworthiness that come into force when freight trains run with passenger trains, rules that Caltrain doesn’t meet. The Sharryo trains cost $6.3 million apiece. A comparable FRA-compliant and Caltrain-style train costs $11.7 million*, almost double the original cost. Not only that, but the locomotive makes the train too long to fit within a normal city block, meaning streets would be blocked while the train is at a station. Caltrain is elevated Caltrain's stations are grade-separated and so does not have that issue.
FRA rules regarding freight/passenger interaction also dictate the specialized track work and signaling systems, which total only $36 million. ADA and FRA regulations conspire to require level boarding at stations, but the stations cost less than $3 million apiece. Even cutting them all entirely would only save $27 million. I cannot understand how one finds cost savings of $120 million by purchasing more expensive trains and cutting legally required capital expenditures.
The point is that train type doesn’t dictate much with regards to SMART’s capital costs. Specialization does come with a price, and there may be one to pay in maintenance later, but SMART’s cost overruns are not the result of purchasing DMUs and so cannot be fixed by replicating the Caltrain model in the North Bay. Indeed, Caltrain’s model is unsuited to the SMART corridor because those corridors are different. Caltrain cannot run with freight, its trains are too long to run at street level, and it is more expensive than the custom-built DMUs SMART already has. Making them fit SMART's constraints would only cost more.
If someone wants to build a boondoggle, running Caltrain on SMART’s tracks would be a good place to start.
UPDATE: Multiple commentators have pointed out that Caltrain is already FRA-compliant, and that the waiver is for future, rather than current, service. This was an oversight on my part, but the point still stands: traditional trainsets are too long and too expensive for SMART.
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* Assuming 1 Amtrak locomotive at $6.7 million and 2 Bombardier Bi-Level cars, to accommodate the 312 seats Spotswood argues are necessary, at $2.5 million apiece.
SMART Money Part I: Relative Costs
There is no doubt that SMART is a major investment. At $404 million, the 37 mile system is the largest single public undertaking the North Bay has seen in quite some time. (Not to say it does not have competitors: CalTrans is widening and repaving Highway 101 up and down Marin at a total cost of $120 million, but that’s another story.) Because of that unique position in recent history, the project has no local context, allowing opponent claims that SMART is an expensive boondoggle to go largely unchallenged. To evaluate those claims, then, we need to place SMART's costs into the wider scheme of transit projects around the country. The easiest way to do that is to break each project down to two metrics: cost per mile (how cheap it is), and cost per rider (how cost-effective it is). Let’s look at both in turn.* SMART, assuming a final cost of $404 million (PDF) for the initial operating segment from San Rafael to Santa Rosa, will cost approximately $10.9 million per mile. These costs go to extensive upgrades and repairs to the old rail corridor, stations, trains, a parallel bike and pedestrian trail, and the attendant staff time and reports to go along with all that. This is relatively cheap for North American transit construction.
Out of the 49 projects The Transport Politic has lengths and cost for, SMART is only the 45th most expensive. The cheaper projects all run along currently active tracks or utilize existing trains, so only minimal track improvements are necessary. From a cost-per-mile perspective, SMART is one of the cheapest in the country.
From a cost-per-passenger viewpoint, however, things look different. SMART’s initial segment is expected to draw 4,800 riders per day (PDF), a respectable total but certainly not ideal. Using that number, we get a much different picture.
SMART’s initial operating segment will cost $84,167 per passenger, the seventh most expensive rail project in The Transport Politic’s database. This is not to say that its impact will be inconsequential – 4,800 riders would be about 9% the size of the projected Sonoma-Marin commuter base – but just that the cost per rider is on the high end of normal. To me, the high ratio of riders to commuters means that there just isn’t a lot of inter-county traffic to capture in the first place. Any growth, then, will most likely happen with intra-county travel.
Sonoma’s cities are trying to boost densities around stations that are currently planned, so ridership intensity should go up. Dick Spotswood could be (although probably isn't) correct and the projections might only be half the real ridership. And, if SMART wanted an intermediate expansion before completing the full line, expanding north to Jennings Road and south to Larkspur Landing – if my back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct – would add about 1,000 riders for $34 million. At $34,000 per rider, that would be a huge boost to the corridor’s effectiveness.
SMART is not the most cost-effective transit system in the country, but it is one of the cheapest. Its initial operating segment will capture a good chunk of Sonoma-Marin traffic, and the urban improvements it is sparking will add value far beyond SMART’s farebox. We now return to our first question: is SMART a boondoggle? The answer, it seems, is no.
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*Note that for this exercise, SMART's stats are pulled from the most recent ridership report from February and the most recent cost update from August. All other system stats are from The Transport Politic's database of rail transit systems that are planned or under construction.
Transit in Marin
Terrapin Crossroads, Phil Lesh’s proposed music venue in Fairfax, CA, has been talked to death lately and, despite the fact that no formal design has been reviewed, is drawing quite a bit of excitement from the town. Very rarely in Marin does a project of this relative scale bring more vocal support than opposition, but Fairfax is a rare town. Still, one item itches: transit access. Getting to and from Fairfax by transit is, to put it mildly, difficult. Golden Gate Transit (GGT), Marin’s principal transit system, only operates a few lines outside the County. This is a problem if you’re among the 28% of San Francisco households that have given up the automobile and rely on transit and your bike to get around. To get from San Francisco to Fairfax, the best-case scenario will take 1:20 at $5.25, and the last bus home leaves at 9:30pm. That’ll probably mean you’d have to leave the town well before any Terrapin Crossroads shows begin. Getting between Fairfax and the East Bay is even worse, as there are no direct routes.
Most Marinites probably don’t care. Why bring more San Franciscans up to Marin, and shouldn’t they own a car anyway? The people that choose San Francisco and Richmond are the people that start new businesses, the young people who are poor in cash but rich in talent and enthusiasm. They are also the people high tech companies want to attract.
Digital Domain Productions, Inc., a digital effects and animation company spun started by Industrial Light and Magic alumni, is moving to Larkspur Landing, but they’re concerned about attracting the young people that come to San Francisco to live in the city, not the ‘burbs. Digital Domain likely chose a location by the Ferry so they could access the car-free employees they want to attract. They’ll contribute to the city coffers, but those employees will probably never venture outside of that neighborhood.
How could they, and why would they? Fairfax has so much to offer, but it’s locked away. A carless San Franciscan thinks of Fairfax as impossibly far away, and even those Digital Domain employees that would come into contact with Marin daily are stuck on a car-centric island wedged between two freeways. Odds are high they’d never even see downtown Fairfax, despite its proximity, and that means lost sales, lost interest, and lost opportunities.
How could Marin break out of its self-imposed exile?
In the short-term, GGT and Marin should market the Marin Experience. Open hills, good hiking, good food and villages away from it all – these are things a city dweller will trek to find. Pushing the time of the last bus departure to midnight would give visitors a chance to enjoy dinner before becoming stranded.
Often suburban buses carry a lot of unknowns about them. Making a simplified map showing what goes where, like my simplified road map at right, can go a long way to demystifying the routes and drawing new riders in. Washington, DC, has a bus called the Circulator, which operates as an express connecting activity centers to one another. A GGT circulator could move from Market and hit the major downtowns between the City and Fairfax. This further simplifies the route and gives GGT a chance to brand each stop with the town’s character: antiques for San Anselmo, redwoods for Mill Valley, the Mission for San Rafael.
Longer-term, Marin needs to move to a more transit-oriented form. It is laid out in corridors, meaning most new construction in Central and South Marin will be along a transit lane, and it’s high time for Marin’s cities to build with the buses in mind. Eventually, ridership would improve enough that GGT will be able to become a viable alternative to the car and build better connections with the regional transportation network. By then Terrapin Crossroads will be years old, and hopefully be a draw north for young San Franciscans looking for good music in the country.
ABAG Density and Affordable Housing: Neither Are What They Appear
Every seven years, the cycle returns. The Association of Bay Area Governments, or ABAG, fulfills its California-mandated duty and examines the state of housing in the Bay Area, using the data to assign affordable housing quotas to its member cities and counties. The following year or two sees each government in Marin haggle over where to wedge affordable housing zones without wrecking the neighborhood. As Marin goes through this process yet again, it’s worth examining whether the process is really as bad as all that, and it’s worth wondering whether ABAG’s – that is, California’s – process even works.
Your Town Is Denser than You Think
California mandates that all affordable housing zones meet one of two densities: 20 units per acre for cities smaller than 50,000 people, 30 units per acre for those larger than 50,000. In Marin, some of the more partisan opponents to affordable housing use these density requirements to paint a picture of a Marin County overrun by poverty and crime, with apartment projects stretching into the skies. They think of Oakland’s inner-city problems of the 1980s and believe that this is what will happen to Mill Valley and Novato if we allow any development.
It is clear from their imaginings that these partisans don’t realize how dense the mandates actually are or how dense their own city already is. To imagine 30 units per acre, think of two-story rowhouses on a tree-lined street. Each is a three bedroom, one bath home with a backyard, parking along a back alley, and a deck. The example above is about 22 units per acre, more than the requirement. This means the homes could be 10% wider, or could have small side walkways.
The higher of the density requirements is 30 units per acre, we can look to duplexes with front garages. These three-story duplexes on Forbes Avenue in San Anselmo count, and are about 30 units per acre.
If we want to go really crazy, take a look at those rowhouses above. Each has what's known as an English basement - a small, basement apartment, the equivalent of an in-law unit. This 22-unit development is actually 44 units per acre! Skyscrapers? Hardly. And if you think these are sardine cans, look at the profile local real estate blog DCMud did on a similarly-sized place near the Supreme Court: 3 bed, 2.5 bath.
California Mandates Explained
Although density itself should not be a problem, there's a reason Marin has the mandates. The State of California has mandated that regions “share the load” of accommodating for future population growth and has entrusted regional organizations, such as ABAG or the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), with determining how the region’s counties and municipalities will share.
In 2008, ABAG released its Regional Housing Needs Allocation, describing how much it believed the Bay Area population would grow and projecting regional demand for affordable housing. (If you’re really curious about the process, you can read all about ABAG’s decision on their website.) However, those mandates say that jurisdictions need to zone, not build, affordable housing of a certain type, with certain ratios for very low, low, moderate and above moderate income levels. That means that a city can meet its quota by zoning that all new development in an area meet or exceed the ratios given by ABAG.
Does This Make Sense?
There is no doubt that the Bay Area is an expensive place to live. Rents in Marin are as high as Washington, DC and parts of New York City, running about $900 per month per bedroom. If one factors in the cost of car ownership and transportation, renting in Marin can easily be more expensive than San Francisco. People, it seems, want to live here, but the price is too high for most. At first blush, creating affordable housing seems to be a good answer.
Affordable housing does have a certain logic to it: prices are high, so control the price to make it lower so more people can afford it. Unfortunately, what this really creates is a housing shortage, driving up the market price even further.
The economics of supply and demand say that when a commodity is scarce but demand is high, the price of the commodity goes up. When the commodity is plentiful or demand is low, the price goes down. In either case, there is enough of the commodity to go around among the people that can afford it; there is equilibrium. When there is a cap on the price, it’s not as profitable to create the commodity so less is made, but it’s more affordable so more people can buy it. With less being made and more being sold, there is a shortage. This is what happens with affordable housing.
When San Rafael mandates that, say, 20% of a housing project must be below the market price, the developer has that much less incentive to build the project. Often, the developer will entirely forgo the project and no housing is made, whether affordable or not. This means that everyone that would have lived in that building has to look somewhere else for their housing, driving up competition, and therefore price, for those units that do get built, forcing more shoppers to the affordable housing alternative. California’s mandates create affordable housing, but they also drive up the price of market-rate housing and increase the pressure to build more affordable housing. It’s a vicious cycle. The more demand there is for affordable housing, the higher the price goes.
Interestingly, affordable housing does serve one purpose well: income diversity. Housing markets, if left alone, create affordable housing ghettos – think “the wrong side of the tracks”. For the poor, the ghetto multiplies the problems of poverty and reduces opportunities for those that live there. As well, ghettos are typically far from jobs, increasing the cost of transportation for those that can least afford it. For the rich, their own wealthy areas insulate them from people unlike themselves, increasing prejudice against the chronically poor, such as new immigrants or minorities. For both the rich and poor, the isolation means they cannot empathize with the other: the poor child can’t see herself being a doctor like her friend’s dad and the wealthy child can’t understand how much she has. Economic segregation can be just as damaging to a society as racial segregation.
Affordable housing mandates are not the only tool in the legal toolbox to combat the problem. Although California mandates affordable housing, it offers concessions to developers that do more than their mandated share, including increased units per acre variances from local zoning regulations. California should replace the mandate system entirely in favor of a concessionary system, allowing developers to choose how much housing to make affordable and how much to make market rate. A concessionary system would decrease the intensity of affordable housing construction but increase overall housing supply, driving down prices and affordable housing demand.
California’s mandates aren’t nearly as bad as they appear, but they are significantly more wrong-headed than one might imagine. They won’t make Novato into the Tenderloin but they cannot solve our housing shortages. That job is up to governments and developers; for the moment, though, the State is just getting in the way.
San Rafael's New Apartment Proposal Isn't What It Could Be
Monahan Development Inc. is proposing to add 41 units of housing and 1,400 square feet of retail to downtown San Rafael at 2nd & B Streets. Although the project is still in its preliminary stages, currently undergoing redesign based on comments from the city’s Design Review Board, what is known is that the building would consolidate four parcels into a four-story building. (Click here for the meeting and attachments.) In whatever form it takes, more apartments would be a boon to downtown, but it is limited by legal barriers and complicated by the presence of a historical Victorian on the site.
The proposal would consolidate four parcels into a four-story, 41-unit apartment building, with two retail bays along B Street and a 57-space parking garage about a half-mile from the Bettini Transit Center, Marin’s busiest transit hub. Two of the parcels to be consolidated are old Victorian houses that have seen better days, the third is a commercial space akin to the other ugly buildings along 2nd, and the fourth is a parking lot that has become a magnet for crime. Given the prime location and the decrepit state of the parcels, it’s not surprising to find that this is not the first time the space has been targeted for development. The Board’s staff report shows that four other proposals since 2005 have been floated and abandoned by various developers and that this is the first without significant commercial space. With San Rafael’s commercial sector so weak, a focus on residential development is a welcome change.
The residential development, however, is severely curtailed by San Rafael zoning laws. The property is zoned for a maximum of 30 residential units, but the developers would receive a density bonus by including more affordable housing. Even with the density bonus, the 41 planned units are only enough to fill out three floors; the bottom is used as a parking garage for the required spaces. While the two retail bays do interact with the street, a ground-floor parking garage is dead space on an already isolated street, and the market is too weak to support more ground-floor retail. In all, zoning cuts about 14 units out of the structure and promotes car dependence.
The complicating factor in this site is a burned-out Victorian-era house at 1212 2nd Street, which is marked as a cultural resource. At the moment, Monahan proposes to demolish all structures on the site, including the house at 1212, but doing anything to the 1212 structure would require an Environmental Impact Report, an arduous and fraught task that makes any construction within the project’s limited allowable scope that much less feasible.
By any measure, downtown San Rafael’s retail sector is weak. Many of the stores that currently exist are transitory, like nail shops, and the streets aren’t exactly bustling. With a new SMART station on the way and the trendiest downtown in the County, San Rafael is primed for the kind of transit-oriented housing Monahan's project could be. Unfortunately, zoning restrictions means that the development will just be better than nothing; it does not start a new path forward for San Rafael or the County. Given the history of failed projects for the site, however, “better than nothing” might be about as good as San Rafael can get.
Larkspur's Missing Village
Imagine living on San Francisco Bay. You live with the sound of the sea and the smell of the Bay. There are fabulous views of shoreline and bits of the City's skyline peak over the hills. Moonlight reflects off the water, and there are places to eat seafood very, very fresh. You work in the city, but it doesn't matter because you are near the best transit in the region: departures are every 30 minutes on the dot and provide a speedy but relaxing 30 minute ride downtown.
I'm writing about Oakland, yes? Near BART? Actually, no: I'm writing about Larkspur Landing. It doesn't have a train yet, but that ferry ride is very real, giving locals one of the best places in the County for transit to the City. Buses regularly depart from nearby bus pads and from the Ferry Terminal, and the Marin Airporter office is in the middle of everything. If a resident does own a car, Larkspur Landing is wedged between Highways 101 and 580, and located along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, giving easy access to Marin's principal arteries and to Contra Costa. This should be a transit paradise and a destination to rival Sausalito or Tiburon, but it's not, and it's a lost opportunity for Larkspur and the County.
Jane Jacobs, the grandmother of New Urbanism, described a vibrant streetlife as vital to the health of a neighborhood. People should be walking, they should be interacting and keeping an eye on the street to keep it safe. Apartments and shops should interface with the street, putting more eyes on the street and adding to the draw of the outdoors. To further encourage streetlife, traffic should be slow, roadways should be narrow and sidewalks wide, and parking lots should be kept away from the street if they exist at all.
Larkspur's downtown does this right: sidewalks are wide and inviting, the stores abut the street, the traffic is calm and there's not a parking lot in sight. When we look at Larkspur Landing, however, it's clear the design is oriented to cars, not people. A clear sign is just how much surfacing parking is available. The Ferry Terminal alone has over 9 acres of parking, a terrible waste of land, and as the map at the start of this article shows that is only half of the surface lots that dot the neighborhood. Larkspur Landing can do better, and the two lynchpins are Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and all that parking.
Sir Francis Drake cuts through the area as a divided and busy roadway, and its primary crossing is a pedestrian bridge that avoids the road altogether. Cars zoom through, the sidewalks are narrow and uninviting, and there is nothing to do along almost its entire stretch through the area as it heads towards San Quentin and I-580. It is a boring and unwelcoming street. To combat this, Drake should be narrowed past the entrance to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. It doesn't need the capacity it has and could be narrowed to two lanes, with the difference going to bike lanes and the sidewalk. There should be an entrance to the shopping center there, and buildings should be reconfigured or newly built to face Drake's sidewalk.
The parking lots present an opportunity for three to four story construction. Although parking, given the car-dependent nature of the County, is a necessity at the moment, the lots could be consolidated into two garages spaced to serve different parts of the community. The freed-up space should be subdivided into streets and 2-4 story buildings. The success of the Food Truck Crush shows a strong desire for a sense of place and permanent service shops. More residents and office workers will support more variety and greater depth of shopping and restaurants, which will serve existing residents as well. Around the Ferry Terminal itself, a large, flexible and programmable plaza would give an opportunity for farmers' markets or an ongoing Food Truck Crush. Strong bus links will be needed to serve a larger population, but a huge number of buses pass by on Highway 101; they could be diverted to serve a revamped Larkspur Landing.
J. S. Rosenfield & Co., new owner of Marin Country Mart - formerly known as the Larkspur Landing Shopping Center - plans to give commuters walking between SMART's planned station and the Ferry terminal someplace nice to walk, a third place literally between work and home. But to make it that walkable place, Rosenfield and the City of Larkspur need to examine solutions for the deficiencies of the entire neighborhood: the lack of a street grid, the disconnectedness of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, the oceans of parking, and the pedestrian-unfriendly development already in place. Many waterfront areas are resounding successes, with examples in Marin and San Francisco. Larkspur should take a long, hard look at this neighborhood and do what it can to make it the best it can be.
The Land Without Crosswalks
Outside Marin, crosswalks can be extremely rare: a note from Raleigh, NC.
Last week I wrote about crosswalks. To rehash, although crosswalks aren't a panacea for pedestrian safety, they are a necessity, giving pedestrians access to the same mobility options as drivers. At their best, crosswalks knit the streetscape into a seamless whole for the pedestrian. Any driver can tell you how frustrating it is to see a destination on the frontage road but have absolutely no way to get there, and any pedestrian that can see their destination on the far side of a crosswalk-deprived road can tell you how harrowing that can be, too.
I just got back from a trip to Raleigh. I stayed in the far-out suburbs, in a leapfrog development in the middle of farms and got to see how the 'burbs look in that particular metro area. I'm glad I had rented a car, because I saw only a tiny handful of crosswalks or sidewalks on our trips around the city. After I got home, I decided to count how many crosswalks along the two primary roads I had driven on, Capital Boulevard and Buffaloe (that's not a typo) Road. The results were bad: between downtown's last crosswalk and the 540 Beltline, over 8 miles of road, there are six crosswalked intersections, and they're between Brentwood Road and New Hope Church Road. In that 1.4-mile stretch, crosswalks are about 0.3 miles apart - a long walk, but at least it's possible to cross the 9-lane arterial intact. Buffaloe Road, meanwhile, has no crosswalks its entire 4-mile length.
I started to take a similar look at the rest of the major roadways in the Raleigh suburbs and found, among other things, that Lynn Road has 11 crosswalks in 10.5 miles. I stopped when I realized that a good bet would be that there are far too few safe pedestrian crossings anywhere in the suburban crescent between the Beltlines, US-64 and US-70.
Raleigh's suburbs also often lack sidewalks, which is especially difficult for pedestrians with strollers. I saw a number of ruts in the grass along the road where people had walked, showing a desperate need for sidewalks, too.
Raleigh is a fast-growing city with a fabulous educational system and research campus, a reasonably strong downtown, and a solid sense of community. The suburbs, both inner and outer, could embrace an opportunity for something more. Their arterials are wide enough to be truly successful transit corridors and complete streets, and their parking lots are large enough for some fabulous infill projects. They should look at the DC suburbs of Silver Spring and White Flint and imagine what could be done in their own neighborhoods. If that's too ambitious, at least they could install some crosswalks.
Walkability, Thy Name Is Crosswalk
Walkability seems to be all the rage these days, and for good reason. Any merchant will tell you that foot traffic is good for business, and any public health expert will tell you walking is good for your health. It gets people out of cars for trips of less than a mile and puts people where they can see each other, generating the vibrant sort of street life where friends and acquaintances run into each. It’s a win for residents, a win for businesses, and a win for the city’s health.
Crosswalks are key to ensuring good walkability. A road system isn’t much of a road system if you need to drive 15 minutes out of your way to turn, and a sidewalk system isn’t much good if one needs to walk 15 minutes to cross the street. A good crosswalk will enhance an entire streetscape, making it more inviting to pedestrians and more lively for all users. In contrast, a streetscape without crosswalks can be dangerous. If crosswalks are far enough apart, the two halves of the street will be cut off from each other, dramatically reducing the walkability of the area.
San Anselmo serves as a good example of good and bad crosswalk planning. There are certain stretches where crosswalks are commonplace, mostly along San Anselmo Avenue downtown and Sir Francis Drake from Tamal Avenue to Fairfax. Outside of these areas, walkability seems to be an afterthought, especially along Redhill and Center, where crosswalks can be almost half a mile apart.
The map at right shows the disconnect. I’ve highlighted all crosswalks over or next to arterial roads in red. The longest stretch without a crosswalk is on Center, where two crossings are nearly a half-mile apart from one another. A sidewalk ends without a crossing, and cars tend to speed along that stretch of road. On Redhill, there’s a commercial strip in the median that has no crosswalks except at the beginning and end. For the 18 years I lived on Forbes, which forms a T intersection with that strip, I only saw a parade of rotating businesses occupying the buildings.
Especially within a half-mile of the Hub, San Anselmo’s principal bus terminal, pedestrian traffic should be encouraged as much as possible. With its arterials forming barriers, businesses become isolated from one another, diminishing the appeal of downtown as a destination, and businesses cannot easily draw from its own population base. San Anselmo, Fairfax and Ross should do a pedestrian traffic survey, identifying areas of possible improvement. I suspect that adding crosswalks and calming traffic would be among the recommendations.
San Anselmo has the potential to become a walkable town with vibrant streetlife in its core and a healthy, walking population, but it needs to invest in the infrastructure to make it happen.
Looking at SMART after Larkspur
SMART works well as a Marin-Sonoma train, but it has a lot of shortcomings, too. Once it's up and running, it needs to look beyond Cloverdale-Larkspur. It's 2030, and SMART is a smashing success. Despite the best efforts of rail opponents throughout the construction of both Phase One and Phase Two, SMART has far surpassed ridership expectations and is the backbone of Marin and Sonoma's transportation systems.
That, at least, is what I hope I'll get to write about in my late 40s. Despite its flaws, and they are manifold, SMART is a good project. This is especially true for the commuters from Sonoma to Marin who constitute 39% of Sonoma's commuting workforce. Yet for Marinites, SMART is only a partial solution. Far more Marin commuters work in San Francisco than in Sonoma, and this will be just as true when SMART is fully built as it is now. So how might SMART expand to serve areas outside Marin? Here are a few of the options I've seen floated around.
- Run BART along SMART tracks, or vice versa. This plan sounds good, but it is technically impossible. BART runs on a different track width than SMART - Indian Gauge for BART, Standard Gauge for SMART. BART tracks would need to be constructed from scratch along 101, and SMART could not operate on them. If people are complaining how expensive SMART is, they'd surely balk at a project with more than 10 times the cost. Back of the envelope cost: $500 million/mile, or $6-35 billion, depending on how far north BART goes.
- Run SMART across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Transbay Terminal. This plan would be a partial resurrection of the original BART plan, which called for the train system to run north to Ignacio. In its place, SMART would have to reconstruct tracks south of Larkspur, reconfigure the bottom deck of the Golden Gate Bridge, and build new tracks out from the Bridge. Once the system reached San Francisco, the system would get far trickier and far more expensive. SMART's trains couldn't run on the streetcar tracks along the Embarcadero for a number of reasons, such as incompatible stations and the safety of mixing streetcars and regular trains, so new tracks would need to be built through a dense, urban area already well-served by transit. In total, 16.5 miles of new track would need to be reconstructed or built. Back of the envelope cost: $8 billion+.
- Run SMART across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to the nearest BART station. This concept makes sense on paper: little new rail would be required, as the lines already exist on the Richmond side. SMART would principally run through an industrial area, so this alignment would enhance the value of the line for freight. Doing this would require reconstructing the bridge's third lanes to handle train traffic. CalTrans is resistant to the idea of bicycles using that lane and would surely oppose running tracks along the bridge as well. As well, it would not help Marinites get to work so much as it would help others get to their jobs in Marin: by 2030, only 11,000 Marinites will commute to the East Bay while 32,000 East Bay residents will commute to Marin. Back of the envelope cost: $2 billion. (Compultense has a fantasy map with this alignment.)
All these plans have some heavy drawbacks. The isolation that makes Marin so fantastic hampers exercises such as this. So is there a way to improve connectivity without doing something with such high barriers? To some degree, yes.
As it currently stands, the Larkspur SMART station will be built 0.4 miles away from the Terminal, forcing a 15 minute walk through extremely pedestrian-unfriendly territory: a bus depot, two parking lots, a barren pedestrian bridge over an overbuilt Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, and another parking lot. This makes the total trip from SMART to San Francisco at least 55 minutes long - the maximum most people are willing to travel. Improving the space between the SMART station and the Ferry to be more pedestrian-friendly would ease the walk, and operating a shuttle would cut down on walking time.
There are no good, inexpensive ways to utilize SMART outside of its already described corridors unless Marin is willing to foot a much, much larger bill. Given the opposition SMART has received already, I cannot imagine support building for a further expansion without a major shift in thinking about transit in the County.
Marin's Roads as Transit
If there is one thing that gets a transit advocate's heart racing, it's a transit fantasy map. It speaks to our not-so-hidden desire that method by which we get around - trains, buses, cars, bikes and feet - should each occupy a niche in the urban landscape, hopefully without too much spillover into another mode's bailiwick. A fantasy map means that a given area is no longer strictly the domain of the car but is accessible to all travelers.
Sometimes, however, a fantasy map is really not a fantasy at all, but a reimagining of what is already there. Cameron Booth, for example, created a map of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System as though it were a subway system. Complutense has a fair number of fantastic maps of Bay Area transit. (Marin sure looks lonely with its one little track.) With that, I submit my own - East Marin's roads as metro.
Why? When my eyes drifted from DC's transit network and back to my home, I realized that Marin is laid out in lines thanks to its geography. Not only does this lend itself to diagramming, but it lends itself to frequent buses: the population is forced to travel along these routes, and they already live close enough to them that bus improvements help the whole corridor, not just a few near the stops.
The map will be updated as time goes on. It needs some work, but it has helped me visualize Marin's potential.
Making Sense of Our Governmental Mishmash
Marin is governed by a huge number of overlapping governments, commissions, committees, agencies, authorities, departments and boards. No wonder the Bay Area is so difficult to govern.
If you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new page at the top of The Greater Marin, with links to every official entity with some power over Marin County development issues, from the White House to the Bolinas Public Utilities District.
At the Federal level, things are pretty clear. Congress has oversight over the Executive Branch, which has issue-specific Departments and Agencies to deal with whatever regulations need to be enforced or enacted. Laws get passed, but are typically implemented by the existing structure.
Lower down the chain, the situation becomes significantly murkier. The Bay shoreline is managed by the San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission, while the Pacific shoreline is managed by the California Coastal Commission. Housing and urban development is even more touchy, with involvement from the Association of Bay Area Governments, the BCDC, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Joint Policy Committee, the County government, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, State regulations, and the affected city and county governments. Transit further complicates affairs, as one or more of the Bay Area’s dozens of transit agencies gets involved, as well as the County transportation authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, State agencies and the US Department of Transportation.
At current count, for Marin alone I count seven unincorporated areas with governments, twelve incorporated cities and towns, four transit agencies, the Board of Supervisors and nine other regional entities with specific issue areas.
The good news is that most of the unelected bodies draw from Marin’s body of elected officials, so there is consistency of policy between them. The SMART Board, for example, requires that some of its members sit on the TAM Board, to ensure that their policies have continuity, and that members are kept abreast of local transportation issues.
This agglomerated structure, though, leads to weakness and a sense that the unelected bodies are sent by Sacramento to intrude upon local sovereignty. When the Clipper Card rolled out, it took a very long time for it to filter into the various member transit districts of the MTC, and even now not all transit agencies accept the card. In the interim, local transit agencies spent millions of dollars to roll out similar cards, duplicating efforts, wasting money, and further prolonging the wait for a standardized smart card.
When Novato debated affordable housing mandates from ABAG, a continual complaint was that Sacramento was imposing its will upon the town. When the city eventually finalized its rather modest housing plans, the chatter was that Novato had told off the State, not an Association on which its own councilmembers sit.
So what can be done?
On the one hand, Bay Area residents are fiercely independent and notoriously headstrong. San Francisco has its own style, and it would just as soon not be lumped in with Fremont if it can be helped, Berkeley would blanche at being dictated to by Oakley, and the New York Times once called Bolinas the "Howard Hughes of towns." On the other hand, the Bay Area functions as a region and faces regional problems, from the Bay itself to the freeways and bridges.
One idea is to create a new office, a Bay Area Lieutenant Governor directly elected by the residents. The official would act as advocate for Bay Area policy in Sacramento and coordinate policy between each of the disparate bodies that has authority over the region. The election campaign of a Lieutenant Governor would unite the region in a way that is impossible under the current governmental mélange, while having someone at the top would mean greater legitimacy for the bureaucracy.
A less ambitious idea would be to simply consolidate the various bodies into a single unified hierarchy, perhaps under ABAG, and reduce overlapping mandates. Any permitting would go through this unified structure. The bodies would share staff, standardize forms and processes, and proximity would allow policies to rub off from one agency to another in a way that’s currently impossible. A merger between ABAG and MTC was proposed in 2001 but eventually died due to internal opposition; the two agencies established the Joint Policy Committee instead.
But no politician or bureaucrat wants to cede power, and few people have the stomach to create government, even if it means streamlining what already exists. There are so many sacred cows, so many little fiefdoms, in the current system that Bay Area residents will most likely be stuck with what they have for some time. At the very least, now there’s an index to reference.
SMART Moves Forward
If you haven't already seen it, the Transportation Authority of Marin (TAM) approved an $8 million bailout of the SMART rail project. The rail project's phase one will extend from downtown Santa Rosa to downtown San Rafael, with operations aimed to begin in 2014.
Not everyone is so pleased with the result. RepealSMART, an anti-transit organization formed exclusively to fight the project, is suing in Marin Superior Court, saying TAM meetings violated open meetings laws and election promises in providing the bailout. The organization also alleges that SMART has an undisclosed $35 million deficit, a number group lead John Parnell says comes from an anonymous source. Although he claims he'd have no issue if the train were being built at once, he calls the first segment "useless." Those that live and work along the segment will doubtless disagree.
Novato's Affordable Housing Opportunity
New housing mandates for the City of Novato present a huge opportunity for the city, if only residents can bring themselves to seize the moment.
The big story in Novato this past month has been affordable housing. The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is mandating new housing the city for the next five years under the “fair share” policy, under which each Bay Area government takes its fair share of the projected regional growth. There has been a tremendous outpouring against the proposed sites as well as the process in general, leaving affordable housing advocates hopelessly outgunned.
Although ABAG shouldn't be mandating housing to Novato at all (not to say that Novato's government is terribly wise about its zoning policies to begin with), the situation does present an opportunity for the city to address some underlying issues that might otherwise get lost in the debate. What kind of town ought Novato be? How can it serve its residents better? Neither side has been particularly effective in conveying their overall vision for the city, I think the answers can be broken down into three parts: density, transportation, and character.
- Character
- Suburb. The suburban character is the model that has been pursued by Novato through most of its modern existence. It has led to the forms common to the Marin County landscape: long commercial strips dominated by parking, single-family detached homes, auto-centricity, exposure to housing market shifts, strip malls, and the freeway as the primary people mover. Pedestrian traffic is focused around areas people drive to.
- City. The form of a city is the model pursued by San Francisco. It contains few and expensive parking spots, contiguous commercial corridors, multi-family dwellings, insulation from housing market shifts, and transit-centeredness. Pedestrian traffic is ubiquitous.
- Town. A hybrid between the suburbs and the city, a town is a small, mixed-density area centered around a central business district. Housing is single-family outside the core and multi-family within. Driving is dominant but walking, biking and transit use are common. Commerce is clustered in the downtown node and radiates out along main thoroughfares. Pedestrian traffic is moderate. This is the model that was pursued in the pre-highway era and dominated Marin when the railroad was the primary means of transportation.
It seems to me that Novato is unsure of what character it ought to be. Many residents have full faith in the surburban form, fighting any attempt to change the character of the town. The location of SMART’s Novato North station a full mile north of downtown and isolated from most of the city, save for an office park, is testament to this thinking. Simultaneously, the construction of a large mixed-use development near downtown, as well as efforts to further densify the area, shows a desire to create a town-like character among the more soft-spoken.
- Transportation
- Auto-centric. The auto-centric transportation model leads to large amounts of land set aside for car storage, such as parking lots. Minimum parking requirements proliferate under this model while walking and active living are severely constrained.
- Transit-centric. Requires a minimum of medium density construction and a safe road network to walk around. Tends to encourage walking to and from transit, as well as within the town itself.
Novato is unabashedly auto-centric. The lack of real choice between an effective bus or rail system and the car exposes the city to gas price swings. Any higher-density development will, by definition, increase traffic congestion, as roads must absorb all the new residents. To mitigate, Novato would need to work with Golden Gate Transit to improve transit links while making the city pedestrian and bicycle friendly. So far, there has been no honest attempt to do so, and this exacerbates suburbia's downsides.
- Density
- Low. Encourages auto use, increases pollution and environmental footprint, and decreases the efficiency of infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc.).
- Medium. Increases noise, decreases pollution, increases infrastructure efficiency.
- High. Increases traffic, transit use, walkability, efficiency, health, and decreases pollution.
Density can be done in a auto-centric way, yielding Los Angeles-style problems, or in a transit-centric way, yielding Seattle-style problems. Density must be paired with mixed-use development to encourage walking, and with transit to keep cars off the road and parking lots from hogging all the land. However, while you can have density without walking and without transit, you cannot have walking and transit without density.
Ultimately, Novato will become more dense. Under the current legal regime, Sacramento and ABAG will ensure that this occurs. Luckily, Novato can turn its situation into an opportunity instead of a tragedy. Novato cannot maintain a purely suburban character, but few want it to. Residents love their downtown, and the city provides incentives to start businesses – these are the marks of a town that wants to be more than San Francisco’s bedroom.
The developments being considered by Novato should be used to satisfy requirements for all income levels, diluting the problems of concentrated poverty, increasing the customer base for businesses downtown, and making that northern SMART station more than just the Fireman’s Insurance commuter shuttle. For a long time, Novatans have looked to South Marin's bucolic, centralized communities with envy. There is no reason why South Marin shouldn't look north and feel the same.
Housing in Marin Part 1: Transit
While Novato is in the throes of a major debate on affordable housing brought on by the Association of Bay Area
Governments’ mandates, it is important to take a 30,000-foot look at Marin County’s urban character, which contributes so much to the appeal – and cost – of the county. An excellent case is the Fairfax-San Rafael corridor.
Most of the cities in Marin advocate for improved density around transit centers. There is a problem with this, however: the transit sucks. In the Fairfax-San Rafael corridor, the lynchpin is San Anselmo’s Hub. The Hub is served by six bus routes going east, west, and south, and about a third of town is within a half-mile radius.
San Anselmo-San Rafael
The basis of effective TOD is simple and easy to understand transit routes. It should not be necessary for riders to memorize multiple schedules in order to use the system. One of the great things about a car is that it gives the rider the capability to leave when they want; one isn’t beholden to a timetable, as one might be with a bus or train.
Increased frequency is one solution to the problem, as anyone who has ridden on New York’s subway can attest. Show up, wait five minutes, and catch the train as it comes by. If you missed it, there’s another one not so far behind. Buses can function like this, too, with headways on certain MUNI routes approaching that of a subway. In suburban environments, where such frequencies are uneconomical, creating a reliably consistent schedule is a good second-best option.
Unfortunately, the existing bus system from the Hub doesn’t cut it. Headways alternate between 15 and 45 minutes for most of the day, forcing passengers to know not just one bus schedule but three, with each changing throughout the day. This is no way to run a bus system.
There is, however, a better way.
In my scenario, I've averaged the headways to a maximum of 30 minutes all day. Even with the variations from afternoon rush hour, a rider always knows that a bus will come in 30 minutes at most. To create this scheme, I shifted the entire 23 schedule back by 15 minutes as well as a selection of the 22 departures. Departures from the Fairfax Parkade to the Hub also become more regular, with headways declining from a maximum of 48 minutes to 35 minutes.
Similar patterns emerge for southbound routes. Buses bound to the College of Marin – the last common stop between routes 22, 24, and 29 – have headways that vary between 20 and 40 minutes. Although the 29 is well-timed with the ferry, such variations are unacceptable for travel within the corridor.
Balancing bus schedules is not easy: what’s been proposed here is only one option for one corridor. Tackling this problem, however, is well worth the effort. The constant push from the Association of Bay Area Governments for more housing under the “fair share” doctrine means that every town must look at places to build. If Fairfax and San Anselmo want this housing to be a benefit rather than a sprawl-making burden, developing reliable and effective links to the rest of the County is imperative. The cheapest way to start is through making the most of the transit we already have.
A Different Marin
I want a different Marin County. Don’t get me wrong: I am utterly in love with the one that exists today. I suppose a more precise phrase is, I want a better Marin County. Often, Marinites point to the fair landscape and bucolic towns as evidence that we are forging a better way forward that the rest of the country. In doing so, however, we ignore the problems right in front of us: car dependency, incoherent master plans, and the acres of parking that rob otherwise quaint downtowns of valuable space. I write here to point out these flaws.
I want a Marin County where owning a car is optional, where the village character of our towns is maintained and not marred by traffic. I dream of a Marin County where Novato’s downtown is vibrant and alive, where the Civic Center is a walkable destination, Fairfax isn’t anchored by a supermarket parking lot, and the Village really is a village center. We are an example for the nation is conservation and growth boundaries; it’s time we became an example to the nation for land use and transportation, too.
My name is David Edmondson. Three years ago I moved to Washington, DC and became enamored with urban living, transit, and the power it has to transform communities. My interest returned to my hometown, San Anselmo, and the unique problems faced by the town and its neighbors as they begin to move towards a more sustainable future. This blog is a place for me and my readers to explore the wide world of transit in Marin and, occasionally, further afield.
My goal is to update with a major article every Monday morning and link rundown every Wednesday, so as to better distract you at work. Still, this is principally a work of advocacy: these are not idle musings. I will always push for a healthier, safer, more livable Marin, no matter how far removed I am from her golden hills. Welcome to The Greater Marin.