It's Policy, Not Preference, that Shapes Cities

Baltimore [Population: 288,530,000]People keep writing about the effectof our urban policies, but very few outside the urbanist blogosphere write about the policies themselves. The articles that result satisfy our curiosity about change but fail to actually inform. They’re all candy, no vegetable. Two articles published last week exemplify this trend. Both describe the effects of the same policies, but both fail to discuss the policies themselves. The New York Times profiled the blighted rail corridor between New York City and Washington, DC. If you ever travel that stretch of rail, you’ll see boarded up homes, weedy back yards, abandoned factories, and the detritus of a country that’s moved on from its industrial past. In its place has arisen an incestuous service economy built by a New York-Washington axis of power. Anyone with any money has moved to the ‘burbs, leaving the cities behind to rot. At least, that's what the Times' Adam Davidson says.

Meanwhile, Meredith Galante, writing in Business Insider, wrote glowingly of micro-apartments, tiny homes 160 to 300 square feet. These, it's thought, will help solve the housing crunch in major cities as people flock to city centers and drive rents to the stratosphere. Such homes, according to one entrepreneur, are the future in increasingly overcrowded urban areas.

Wait a second. Anyone with money has moved to the ‘burbs but people with money are so desperate to live in cities that tiny, expensive apartments make sense? Both explanations can’t be right, but both trends are happening anyway. What gives?

Suburbanization, and the policies that encourage it outside and within cities, is to blame. The layers of regulation banning increasing density; the hundreds of billions invested in roads to speed suburbanites into the city in cars; the parking lots to store all those cars that destroyed buildings and the city’s fabric; and the zoning codes that locked uses into place have released bizarre forces on cities. Where suburbanization has been restrained, city living is so valuable but so difficult to accommodate that housing is squeezed into every nook and cranny of developable space, and there's not a lot of that. Where suburbanization runs rampant, cities collapse under the weight of regulation and outright destruction.

Micro-apartments in the Boom Towns

Zoning, that can be the most destructive by banning reinvention of place. Regulations dictate exactly what kind of building can be built, how many people can live there, what kind of business you can open, how many parking space you must have, how far back the building must be from the property lines, and on and on.

To amend the zoning code requires going through homeowners zealously protective of the status quo. Consideration of legalizing in-law units incites howls of protest that such plans would destroy the neighborhood. Even in New York, the idea of allowing taller buildings in Midtown Manhattan has caused consternation and hand-wringing over whether they would, yes, destroy the neighborhood.

It wasn’t always so. In the 1910s, Manhattan’s West Side was all mansions; by the 1930s, it was apartment blocks. The wealthy had found other places to put mansions, and the city was growing so rapidly that allowing one family to occupy a half-acre of land was unacceptably expensive. Putting a hundred families in its place ensured that new housing satisfied the extremely high demand. Apartments along San Rafael’s D Street are the result of the same process. Sprinkled among single-family homes, the apartment buildings provide valuable housing for those who want to live close to Marin’s urban heart.

Now, the places where development can happen become ever more rare, and stiff design review processes ensure that it will take huge sums of money and sometimes years to pass just one project. It’s no wonder there’s a housing shortage - we have the political brakes on so hard we can't move anywhere near fast enough. Micro-apartments, which allow the most units to be squeezed into the city's apartment production line, are the inevitable result of supply constrained on every side.

Cities We Leave Behind (Every Day)

In the blighted cities described by the Times, policies designed to facilitate the suburbs accelerated declines from prominence. Loans and tax deductions favored single-family homes, single-use zoning isolated residences from business from office, and superhighways encouraged anyone with money to leave cities behind. It didn't help that those superhighways destroyed huge swathes of cities and shut out downtowns from the nearby neighborhoods.

The trigger for the exodus in many of the cities between Washington and New York were race riots in the 1960s. Angry mobs tore through businesses and destroyed the livelihoods of millions. Even DC was not immune; the current population boom mostly involves repopulating the burned-over areas that had rotted for decades. New freeways built over the poorest neighborhoods whisked people between their new homes in the ‘burbs and their old jobs in ossified office districts, zoned and reserved for the needs of car-based office workers. Even today, those workers leave their cities behind to fend for themselves on a daily basis.

Now that we want to reinvest in our center cities, the priorities of the car-driving suburbanite still take precedence. Requiring developers to build a certain amount of parking spaces, for example, is extremely common in American cities. Unfortunately, the practice has little basis in science and does quite a bit of harm. It reduces the viability of projects by forcing the construction of excess spaces, hurts the streetscape by putting more cars on the road and lining sidewalks with parking rather than retail. At the very least it means investments in on-street bicycling are rejected because of reductions in on-street parking or in the number of lanes on a street. Dedicated transit lanes and freeway demolitions are often rejected for the same reason.

Yet this is The Greater Marin, a blog about a suburb, and it may seem out of step to advocate for keeping Marin’s low-rise towns while excoriating cities for bowing to the needs of the people that live in those low-rise towns. I don’t think it is.

Novato has zoning rules that ban banks from facing Grant Avenue, forcing the new Umpqua Bank branch to face a parking lot instead of the sidewalk. San Anselmo's zoning bans bike shops from San Anselmo Avenue, though clearly the rule is happily ignored. San Rafael forces downtown residences to build parking on-site while city-owned parking garages sit half-empty. These restrictions hurt our towns, businesses, and both current and potential residents. It’s not just the big cities that are hurt by unexamined rules; we are, too.

When articles tout micro-apartments as the Next Big Thing or bemoan the decline of the industrial city without a policy discussion, they do a disservice. They gloss over the causes that created and perpetuate these trends, providing easy answers in place of honest critique. It wasn't just industrial decline that wrecked the cities of the Northeast; suburbanization did. It's not that young people want to live in tiny apartments; zoning forces them to trade living space for location. Avoiding discussions like this is bad for San Francisco, bad for the Northeast, and, ultimately, bad for Marin. The Times and Business Insider should know better.

Two-Week Links: Busy Busy

Farmer's Market, San Rafael Quite a bit has happened in the past two weeks, so I won't bore with an introduction. From SMART to the economy to a rash of deaths, it's been eventful. Oh, and that whole election thing. Here are the highlights.

Marin and Beyond

  • The driver who killed Hailey Ratliff was cleared of wrongdoing by Novato PD, who said the driver was going the speed limit and that Hailey was at fault for failing to yield to traffic. (Patch) While the Ratliff family has moved back to New Mexico, their former neighbors are investigating ways to make Novato streets safer. (IJ)
  • It won't be viable to raise SMART tracks at Jennings Road in Santa Rosa. The planning process was begun too late for that option, but the other contenders - an at-grade crossing and an elevated pedestrian crossing - aren't so great, either. (PD)
  • California is hiring new staff so water quality permits for SMART and Marin County can be approved more quickly, and SMART and Marin are picking up the tab. (IJ)
  • San Rafael is waging a crackdown on homelessness in its downtown and is looking to move homeless services out of the neighborhood. City manager Nancy Mackle calls it a quality of life concern; homeless advocates call it unjust and capricious. (IJ)
  • The economy is going strong in Marin, and it's going to get better. So says the Marin Economic Forum, which projected continued job and income growth for at least the next two years. (IJ)
  • With a second term secured, the Obama Administration has a fantastic opportunity to reform how the US funds infrastructure, builds railroads, and stop some of the principal drivers of sprawl. (Atlantic)
  • Not every coffee shop needs to sell tea, and not every building needs to look the same. David Alpert makes a cogent argument for form-based zoning and for abolishing parking minimums. (GGW)
  • Yeas and nays: Sausalito City Council gets a much-needed shake-up. (IJ) ... Ross gets to keep its police department. (IJ) ... Marin parks and open space get a boost. (Patch) ... Levine vs. Allen still unclear, except to Levine. (PD, KSRO) ... And the rest of the initiatives, state propositions, and offices. (Pacific Sun
  • And...: A major mixed-use office building opens in Novato. (IJ) ... Larkspur's Doherty Drive is looking good with new bike lanes. (James Bikes) ... The Larkspur Ferry set a ridership record by transporting people to the Giants victory parade. (Patch) ... George Lucas is pressing on with developing Grady Ranch despite Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm. (Patch)

The Toll

Three dead, 19 wounded in just two weeks of travel in Marin and Sonoma.

  • Alvin Hesse was killed by a driver on Wednesday while crossing the street in Sonoma. Police arrested a suspect, 80-year-old Joe Kwai Lee, on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter. Hesse was 93. (PD)
  • Two other drivers were killed in two separate, single-driver crashes in Sonoma County. (PD)
  • 92-year-old Leo Arkelian hit two teens crossing the road in Sonoma with his car, seriously injuring one and moderately injuring the other, but he denies that he hit anyone and is fine to drive. His denial raises the question: when is someone too old to drive? (PD)
  • Toraj Soltani, testifying at trial, detailed his harrowing experience nearly getting run over by Harry Smith: how Smith yelled at Soltani and tried to run him off the road, Soltani's retailiation, and the apoplectic rage that nearly turned Smith into a murderer. Smith is on trial for attempted murder and assault. (PD)
  • Remembering John Von Merta, a homeless man who was killed by a driver while crossing the street last month. (PD)
  • A bicyclist injured himself by falling off a trail in West Marin. While a friend was retrieving his bike, a driver careened off the road nearby and got stuck in a tree; the friend helped the driver escape. (Patch)
  • Santa Rosa: Two drivers injured themselves by colliding head-on.  (PD) ... A pedestrian crossing the road was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver, who was later found and arrested. (PD) ... A driver hit and injured two trick-or-treaters on Halloween, while another child was hit by another driver in a separate crash that night. (PD)
  • Everywhere Else: A driver injured herself and her passenger on Highway 101 in Greenbrae. (PD) ... Three people were injured in a three-car crash on Highway 12 in Glen Ellen. (PD) ... A driver injured himself and two others in Healdsburg by crashing into a pole. (PD) ... A driver and bicyclist collided in Sonoma; the biker was injured. (PD) ... Four people were injured in three separate crashes caused by drunk drivers in Marin last month. (IJ)

What to Do if You Come Across a Bike Crash - Comments

Last week I posted on Greater Greater Washington about what to do if you come across a bike crash. Though I thought it was fairly thorough, the comments provided a fantastic appendix to the piece. The purpose of my piece was to inform potential bystanders to be aware of the needs of the situation and be conscious of any roles to play. Commenter SJE wrote with a proper hierarchy:

I agree it is important to take charge, and direct people. Most people don't know what to do. Important tasks:

1. Caring for victim 2. Collecting witness statements. Best to get via smart phone, so is verbatim and can be used in court 3. Ensure driver does not leave 4. Directing traffic 5. Calling for help and police, and relatives. 6. Looking after the broken bike.Another thing is not to focus on blood. People die all the time from internal injuries, including head injuries, that show little sign of outward bleeding. If bike or car is mangled, look more closely at the cyclist.

I personally believe everyone should take basic EMS courses: you WILL use it, and it could be your life that is saved.

I didn't collect witness statements but I did have a smart phone. I didn't want to seem too intrusive, but I should have been more aware of the needs of the victim and responders. It's equally important to ensure, in a bike-on-pedestrian crash, that the bicyclist doesn't leave. A victim of a bike hit-and-run is as much a victim as someone involved in a regular hit-and-run.

Marc pointed out that talking to the victim is equally important:

1. If you are first on the scene, don't just say "someone call 911". Instead, point to someone else and say "YOU - call 911". There have been occasions where no one called 911 because everyone else thought someone else was doing it.

2. While you're waiting for EMS to arrive, one very practical thing you can do is ask for the person's medical history. Do they have any medicine allergies? Are there any major preexisting conditions the EMT's should know about? Where specifically is the pain? Can they wiggle their fingers and toes? Stuff like that.

Keep in mind that someone could be conscious right after the crash but lapse into unconsciousness by the time the EMT's arrive, so better to get the information while you can.

Ms. D wrote in about the peril of identifying as a doctor or other medical professional:

Also, ask for help in a non-identifying way. I have several friends and family in the medical field, and they've all expressed that they're afraid to identify themselves for fear their position will void good samaritan laws (which are designed to protect non-professionals who try to help and fail or end up doing harm). They DO help, but they would never say "I'm a nurse/medical assistant/etc." While I have extensive first-aid/CPR/defibrillator training due to some previous jobs (not in the medical field) and don't normally ask for help in that regard (but rather offer my help), I'd recommend asking if anyone knows first aid rather than asking if anyone is a medical professional if you don't feel up to providing the assistance necessary.

She added that having an emergency kit is handy, even if you're a pedestrian or a biker:

My emergency kit, which fits in everything but my smallest clutch, is a mini-mag, sterile gauze, a pair of latex (could also be latex-free) gloves in a sealed baggie, and some alcohol wipes. A pen and small notepad is also useful if you find yourself in charge of collecting witness information, though, as noted, smart phones have excellent features (notepad, video camera, etc.) for this purpose, as well.

Lastly, Observer gave us an update on what actually happened:

I was standing next to the woman injured in this accident Thursday night. Yes, standing. Because she wasn't on a bike. In fact, when the light turned green for pedestrians she was hit (admittedly without looking) by a bicyclist who had run the light.

Second, in response to your twitter conversation with Ron Knox, she never lost consciousness. We did have a frustratingly hard time flagging down police cars to help protect us from traffic, but EMS arrived and the woman was able to walk to the ambulance by herself.

I hadn't been taking witness statements, but the combination of bike on the curb + woman on the ground meant bicyclist struck. A few side conversations I'd had about whether the driver was still there were met with an "I don't know", so it was an assumption on my part.

Changing Demographics Calls for Changing Housing

Discussions of Marin’s development often lack data but are long on anecdote and impressions, giving misguided assertions about Marin's population or housing undue cachet. But if Marin wants to genuinely plan for the future, it must face the facts of its people and its housing market: there is strong demand for larger apartments in Southern Marin and smaller apartments elsewhere; there are more kids and more people living alone; and that the graying population will need to be able to downsize.

Graying Needs

Between the 2000 and the 2010 Census, Marin’s population grew by about 2 percent and its median age increased three years, from 41.3 years old to 44.5. While the proportion of school-aged children increased by about 1 point, the proportion of middle-aged people plummeted by 10 points; those aged 55 and up increased by a similar amount. So, while we got older, our families grew a bit.

And though our average household got a bit larger, the number of people living alone, especially seniors has already started to increase faster than the population as a whole, while the proportion of families has actually gone down.

The shift is divergent between Southern Marin and the rest of the county. While the median age of Southern Marin has kept pace with the rest of the county, it's been attracting families. The number of people living alone actually declined by 2.5 percent in Southern Marin while it jumped 9.4 percent everywhere else. The population of elementary-aged kids positively boomed, growing an astounding 17.3 percent while the rest of the county’s population shrank by 1.1 percent.

Yet even here, the continued shift to older individuals means its familial boom can’t continue without seniors leaving the region. Southern Marin is where the families are going, it’s true, but it’s aging just as quickly. Unless those seniors start to leave or new family housing is built in Southern Marin, housing costs are going to continue to climb into the stratosphere.

As this shift away from families and towards empty-nesters goes on, people will increasingly use family-sized homes for couples and singles. Already we have 1.17 bedrooms per person compared to 0.95 for the state and 1.15 for the country at large.  If we want to keep our homes turning over while keeping our long-term residents in town, we need to allow space for people to downsize into. Senior housing, small single-family homes and the like would allow people to transition without leaving out of the county. Building such homes near transit would give seniors flexibility once it’s no longer feasible to drive, incidentally a goal of AARP.

Squeezing the Market

Rents reflect the shifting demands in Marin's largely stagnant market. The average rent for a three bedroom apartment has skyrocketed in Southern Marin, moving up 28 percent to $3,232 in just a year, from the first quarter of 2011 and now.  Studio rents there have stayed fairly steady, increasing only 4 percent in the same time period. In Central Marin, however, studios and two-bedroom apartments have dominated the market's rise, with average rent increasing by 14 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

The housing supply has left behind the studio apartment. Marin has been upsizing, replacing small homes for large ones: the number of no- or one-bedroom homes has dropped 19 percent while larger homes have increased 11.9 percent. It means there will quickly be a shortage of studio and one-bedroom apartments, and there's no relief on its way.

Zoning codes currently in force actually punish developers for building small units. Density limits on a per-unit basis encourage developers to build the largest units that can be rented rather than the most rentable mix of units. Other limits, such as maximum floor area or parking minimums, further strains a developer’s capability to build small. ABAG density guidelines only make the problem worse by politicizing density over height, inspiring impassioned speeches against zoning 31 units per acre.

In Southern Marin, where high rents should bring more development, community backlash against any and all development has had a major chilling effect. Who would buy developable land when they see the nightmare faced by the Blithedale Terrace? Those high rents for three bedroom apartments are the result of a major housing shortage. Shockingly, they’re actually approaching the cost of studio apartments on a square-foot basis, something unheard of except in extremely constrained and warped markets.

Bottom Lines

If Marin wants to continue to be a place for families and its seniors, it must move away from density limits and allow the market to adjust. San Rafael is already doing this with the Downtown Station Area Plan, which maintains height limits but abolishes density limits. Southern Marin could get a boost from the Mill Valley General Plan update if it’s paired with permitting process reform.

Marin can’t be held in stasis; its housing supply is built for an increasingly small demographic – the home-owning family – leaving the childless, seniors, and renting families to compete with extraordinarily high prices. If Marin tries to steer clear of infill development it will only shut out all but the wealthiest of new residents and those lucky enough to get a spot in affordable housing. We’ll be forced to build nonprofit housing, burdening municipal and county budgets with people who need services but whose homes are exempt from property and parcel taxes. Marin is changing, and our governments and residents need to let our housing supply do the same.

What would you do if you came across a bike crash?

Midtown Manhattan crash involving bicyclist, hit by the driver of a van. As I walked home from work last night, I saw a crowd gathered at the corner of 17th and L Streets, NW. On closer inspection, a woman was lying in the road. A bicyclist had been hit. Have you thought about what you would do in such a situation?

A few people were hunched over, talking to her, trying to keep her still and calm. The rest of the crowd watched, concerned but unsure of what to do. Since I'd learned about the bystander effect, which renders people immobile rather than helpful in a crowd, I'd mentally rehearsed how to deal with a crash.

Read the rest of the post on Greater Greater Washington.

Don't Drive to the Parade

For the love of all that is good and holy, don't drive in to San Francisco today. If you've been living under a rock, or really just don't care about sports that much, here's a protip: the Giants won the World Series in a sweep, and now all of the Bay Area wants to celebrate on Market Street. In short, the roads and ferries are going to be packed. Take a bus instead.

Golden Gate Transit has a handy guide to all things Giants and transit-related. They're adding ferries out of Larkspur and Sausalito to deal with the crowds.

Easy, you say. You'll just drive to the ferry, right? Yeah, don't do that either. The ferry parking lots are already full, and the ferries themselves are full, at least for the morning. If you have time, you can swing by the ticket kiosks at either the Larkspur Landing or Sausalito ferry terminals to see if there are any tickets left for the afternoon, but in case you don't have the time, there's one unthinkable option: the bus.

Yes, that much-maligned mode of transportation has capacity to spare. As of 8am, commuter buses were emptier than normal, so they definitely have room. You can figure out how to get into the city through 511.org, Google Maps, the GGT maps, or my own guide to the freeway below. The strip map can be printed on six standard-sized sheets of paper; just choose "Poster" on your printout. Sorry, the pocket-sized version is coming out a day late.

One other thing that might prove handy is the General Timetable to 101 (PDF), which has how to get anywhere from anywhere on Highway 101.

So don't drive to the ferry, and you probably won't get a seat even if you bike or walk there. Don't drive at all. Take bus to San Francisco instead. There's room to spare.

UPDATE: It totally escaped my mind that you could take the 40/42 bus from the San Rafael Transit Center to Richmond or El Cerrito del Norte BART stations and take those into the city instead of the direct bus lines. It'll take longer, and the buses are likely delayed this morning because of heavy traffic on 580, but it is another option. Just don't drive to the stations; their lots are probably already full, too.

Shootings are Second to Crashes

More police have been killed by cars over the past decade than have been shot. In fact, the number one cop-killer in the US is the car, not the gun. Add in motorcycle crashes and its more than all violent deaths combined. Transit Miami, in an article about public apathy over traffic deaths, found a table with the causes of police officer death as collected by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund over the past 10 years. Nationally, 173 officers have died nonviolently, such as a job-related illness, 650 officers have been killed violently, and 687 have been killed in traffic.

Think about that. More cops die on the road than die in the street.

People fixate on the violent deaths and try to prevent those, but pay little heed to traffic fatalities. A quick search of Google trends data finds peaks about officers shot or killed. Only one article, from Maryland, was about an officer killed in a car crash, but it’s a memorial piece. There’s talk about the dangers police face every day, but, just like when a civilian dies, traffic deaths are taken as inevitable.

They’re not inevitable. Simple things, easy things, can make police officers and civilians safer when travelling. Road safety isn’t as sexy as bulletproof vests or Tasers, but it’s the difference between life and death for those who have pledged to serve and protect the public. We owe it to them, and ourselves, to never forget that it's roads, not just guns, that kill.

Mid-Week Links: Get Up

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_V657yEhWY]What's it like to be a bus driver? How's it different from a bus passenger? How we get where we go shapes our perspectives and our understanding in ways we miss.

Marin Proper and Greater

  • BioMarin opened its new downtown San Rafael headquarters to much fanfare, with the mayor and lieutenant governor in attendance. The move brings 300 workers to the most transit-accessible place in the county; here's hoping they take advantage. (IJ)
  • Novato's new economic development director has some big ideas for Novato, especially downtown, and that could mean some positive change is on its way for the beleaguered city. (IJ)
  • Tam Valley residents spoke out against zoning for 34 new residences at Tam Junction, saying they would cause illness, environmental harm, traffic chaos, and injury to neighbors. (Herald)
  • Road maintenance, housing, and the county safety net will get the bulk of a $5 million surplus allocated by the Marin Board of Supervisors. Still to be decided is how to split $46 million in funding for pension and health liabilities. (IJ)
  • Protected class I bicycle lanes reduce injuries by up to 90 percent where installed, according to a new survey out of Toronto. (Streetsblog)
  • Amtrak continues its move toward moderate-speed trains with a successful 110-mph test in Illinois. That segment is expected to cut about an hour off of the Chicago-Saint Louis travel time. (The Hill)
  • And...: Cotati broke ground on its new transit center, which will include the SMART station. (PD) ... A 20-room hotel is coming to Sausalito. (IJ) ... New affordable housing is on its way to Hamilton. (NBBJ) ... Superman declares a war on cars, slums, and takes it a bit too far. (Planetizen)

The Toll

Our transportation system killed two people and injured two others this week.

  • Alejandro Torres was killed by a driver in Santa Rosa while crossing the street. The driver, Sebastian Valdoz, who was uninjured, says he didn't see Torres, who was well into the crosswalk. Santa Rosa police are investigating the cause but accused pedestrians of being over-confident when they have the right-of-way and have traditionally laid fault at the feet of the dead. Torres was 24. (PD)
  • Dorothy Buechy, who injured herself in a car crash last Wednesday, died of her injuries in Santa Rosa on Saturday. She was 86. (PD)
  • The IJ reports that the rash of accidents in Monday's rains slowed down the commute but writes not a word about injuries.
  • The Tiburon man who tried to run down a pedestrian because of the pedestrian's plaid shirt was banned from driving for three to five years. This is on top of a one year jail sentence. (IJ)
  • A big-rig driver lost control of his truck in the rain and crashed it in Santa Rosa, spilling diesel fuel and injuring himself. (PD) ... A bicyclist was hit by a driver in Sebastopol on Friday and suffered major injuries. (PD)

If you'd like to contribute, shoot me an email at theGreaterMarin [at] gmail.com. I need your expertise, your voice, to keep TGM consistently informative and relevant to Marin's changing urban and transportation landscape.

The Transit Benefit (sort of) Comes Back

This week, Governor Brown signed into law a $75 pre-tax transit benefit for employers to offer employees. It’s a partial fix to cuts to the federal transit benefit, which dropped from $230 to $125 this year.

I say partial because while the federal benefit applies to all companies, California restricts its new benefit to companies with 50 employees or more, excluding a hefty 40% of Bay Area workers. As well, it still doesn’t make the transit benefit equal with the parking benefit; drivers, who get a $240 parking benefit, still have an advantage.

While $230 covered any bus transit commute starting in Marin and most starting in Sonoma, $200 isn’t enough to cover Novato transit commutes to San Francisco or many Sonoma commutes. California still has a way to go to intelligently promote and fund transit, and the region continues to leave low-hanging fruit like congestion pricing on the tree, but it’s good to see the state step up where Congress has failed.

Mid-Week Links: Oops

las gallinas creek, marin county

Marin and Beyond

  • SMART is owning up to its failures at Gallinas Creek, admitting that it misinterpreted its own guidelines for construction work and violating state and federal protected species and habitat laws in the process. The agency is now seeking the proper permits to continue construction work. (IJ)
  • The Marin Board of Supervisors approved a sprawl development just past Santa Venetia, allowing ten homes to be built far from just about anything. (IJ)
  • That GGT/MT contract isn't quite as finished as we'd hoped. While staff tried to finalize language, Marin Transit raised concerns that it doesn't give MT the flexibility to choose which routes GGT would operate, leading to an impasse. (IJ)
  • India issued, then rescinded, an arrest warrant for Vijay Mallya, owner of Marinscope newspapers. His airline, Kingfisher, bounced $1.9 million worth of checks; the warrant was withdrawn when Kingfisher agreed to pay the outstanding bills. (IJ)
  • Every time you use a Clipper card, a computer records that data, and that data can be subpoenaed. There's also a smartphone app that allows a Clipper card to be read and travel history retrieved. (Bay Citizen)
  • The Federal Housing Administration has loosened restrictions on financing for mixed-use development. Under old rules, which I discussed a while ago, FHA wouldn't fund developments with more than 25% commercial space. Under new rules, that goes up to 50%. (Streetsblog)
  • Though some Marinites call anything above 4 units per acre "extremely high density housing", a development in Los Angeles shows that even 40 units per acre can be suburban and walkable. (Greater Greater Washington)
  • And...: American AgCredit plans to build a new office park in Sonoma County, thankfully near a planned SMART station. (NBBJ) ... Our Presidential election season utterly ignores car-free issues. (Greater Greater Washington) ... MCBC is hosting a family bike workshop this Saturday at 10am in Larkspur. You should definitely be there. (IJ) ... Fairfax's Biketoberfest was a roaring success, as always. (Patch)

The Toll

This week, our transportation system killed three people and wounded 14 others.

  • A man killed himself when he crashed his SUV into a tree in Santa Rosa on Thursday. Police aren't sure why he lost control of the vehicle, and his name hasn't been released. (PD)
  • Joseph Von Merta was killed by a driver in Santa Rosa, the ninth pedestrian to die in the city this year. He was hit while crossing the road early Monday morning, and died Wednesday night. The driver, Emanuel Morales-Rodriguez, suffered minor injuries, and fault has not been determined. Von Merta was 57. (PD)
  • A driver died in a single-car crash in Windsor early Sunday morning while she exited Highway 101. Sheryl Greenlee may have suffered a medical emergency that killed her and caused the crash, but the investigation is ongoing. Greenlee was 43. (PD)
  • A driver lost control of their vehicle near Marinwood and spun out on wet pavement. The result was an 11-car crash and eight injured people, six of which had to go to the hospital. (Patch)
  • Cassandre Jade seems to have seriously injured herself in Lucas Valley. She drove off the road and into a creek before dawn on Thursday and was only extricated four hours later. (IJ)
  • Three people were injured in a three-car collision in Healdsburg. (PD) ... A bicyclist was seriously injured by a driver in Santa Rosa on Saturday. (PD) ... A car flipped on Highway 101 in San Rafael on Wednesday morning. No injury or other information was released. (IJ)

Alternative Future: A Contemporary Interurban

Let's say for a minute the Interurban hadn't stopped running in 1941. It was bleeding money, but its parent company, NWP, was a for-profit entity. What if the Interurban had somehow survived?

For the sake of this exercise, I'm taking a few liberties. First, that the Bay Area had valued its rail transportation system from the 30s to the present, but had consolidated it all, as well as the Golden Gate Bridge, under the single umbrella of the MTC. Second, that European best practices had been implemented at least in this corner of the country. Third, that the Interurban could now survive on a 50% subsidy. And fourth, that Marin and Sonoma have their current populations, though with less sprawl.

Though I had originally intended for this to be a bit more a light post rather than something more data-driven, a Twitter conversation with Dan Lyke motivated me to put some numbers behind the costs of an Interurban.

Costs per vehicle-kilometer (vkm) vary widely based on the system. Vancouver's automated Skytrain system costs $2.18/vkm, BART costs around $3.50/vkm, and New York's subway costs $5.81/vkm. Using quite a few assumptions, I get an average annual operating cost between $43.2 million and $111.6 million. If we assume an average fare of $2.50 and a 50% farebox recovery rate, total ridership would need to be between 8.6 million per year, roughly the same number of transit trips on today's GGT system, and 22.3 million. With the Geary and North Beach extensions (Muni's 38-Geary alone carries over 13 million weekday passengers per year), it's entirely feasible for the system to meet BART's 80% farebox recovery.

Alas, reconstructing the system would be prohibitively expensive and politically impossible. Large portions of some major roads (Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Fourth and Third Streets, Magnolia Avenue, Miller Avenue, and others) would need to be converted back to rail, wealthy homeowners would need to accept trains running behind their back yards, Sausalito would need to take a new elevated railway along the waterfront, Geary and North Beach would need to be torn up for a new subway, and over $10 billion would need to be spent. While the San Francisco part of the project might be worth it, for 8 million riders per year, most of them already served by transit, the cost and pain of the Marin Interurban simply wouldn't be worth it.

This map, along with all my other maps, is posted in the Map Room.

Mid-Week Links: Finish Line

Untitled Endorsements are in! I don't do endorsements myself, but that doesn't stop me from linking to the endorsements of organizations and newspapers I respect. Greenbelt Alliance says Yes to Marin's Measure A and Yes to Healdsburg's Measure W. The North Bay Bohemian has its recommendations for state propositions, the Pacific Sun has its comprehensive endorsements for the entire ballot, and the IJ is working through its recommendations on the Editorial page.

Marin County and Beyond

  • SMART is under investigation for violating the terms of its environmental impact report and potentially disturbing endangered clapper rail and salt harvest mouse. The agency didn't get the proper permits for its demolition work around Gallinas Creek and says its also investigating what happened. (IJ)
  • The Marin Housing Authority is being sued for questionable repair bills and fees housing advocates say were illegally used to balance the agency's books and causing some tenants to be evicted. (IJ)
  • Marin Transit's Catch-A-Ride program rolled out a couple of weeks ago, and the feedback is good so far. Catch-A-Ride gives registered seniors a $14 to $18 discount on up to eight cab rides per month. (News-Pointer)
  • Gerstle Park neighbors want a crosswalk removed because it's supposedly dangerous despite there having never been an accident there. The crosswalk would continue to exist as an unmarked crosswalk anyway. (Patch)
  • It was a close call that saved Richardson Bay from becoming a kind of West Coast Coney Island and the site of a World's Fair. Less close were dams in the Bay, a submarine base in Sausalito, and a canal from the Pacific to Richardson Bay along Tennessee Valley. (Marinscope)
  • Gas price spikes in California are thanks to a confluence of bad market factors that should begin easing soon. Marin's car-centric lifestyle and character make it more vulnerable to such shocks than other counties. (IJ)
  • If you ride a bike in Marin, you may want to register it for free with the county sheriff's office. (Patch)
  • And...: Napa's Green Commute Challenge is going strong after six years. (Register) ... SMART begins its move to a SMART-inaccessible office park. (PD) ... Sometimes, transit systems have so much waste that, when restructured, they can become far, far better without a single dime more of operating costs. (Human Transit)

The Toll

Two men were killed and three people were injured.

  • Julio Villalobos was killed by a driver in San Rafael. Police are still trying to determine the circumstances of the incident, and charges have not yet been filed. After outcry over the safety of the intersection, San Rafael's public works department is taking a fresh look at its safety. Villalobos was 84. (IJ)
  • Heath Kingsley Hunter injured two people and killed himself in Sonoma last Thursday. While on his motorcycle, Hunter rear ended and injured driver Fernando Castro. Hunter lost control of his motorcycle and drifted into oncoming freeway traffic where he collided head-on with driver Christine Luckin, seriously injuring her passenger and killing himself. Hunter was 43. (PD)
  • A driver hit a utility pole in San Anselmo, causing it to fall across Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and closing the road for 17 hours. The driver wasn't injured. (IJ) ... A man suffered diabetic shock and crashed his car in Glen Ellen on Monday. It's unclear if he was injured in the crash. (PD) ... A motorcyclist seriously injured a biker in Rohnert Park on Sunday. Police are looking for the motorcyclist, who did not stay on the scene. (PD)

How to Make Safe Novato Streets

If last month’s tragedy taught Novato anything, it’s that residents need to take road safety as seriously as they do housing elements. Lives, not just town character or property values, can hang on things we hardly ever think about. Where should the first stop sign be when we enter Novato? What about this road makes the speed limit seem so low? There are easy ways to reform Novato’s streets to be safer for drivers, bikers, and pedestrians, but they only take us so far. Going further would require Novato to rethink the fundamental purpose of its roads. But let’s start easy.

The Gateways

The points of greatest danger are the approaches into the city, where people transition from highway to city driving. In these areas, speeds officially fall from 45+ miles per hour down to 25 or 35, though roadway design and culture tack on another 5-10 miles per hour.

To bring people from highway mode and into city mode, Novato has employed stop signs and stop lights, but these are insufficient. Coverage of the Ratliff crash included quotes from people grousing about high vehicle speeds where she was killed, yet the only indication of a falling speed limit was the speed limit sign. Everything else about the road screamed at the driver, “It’s safe to drive fast here.”

European cities use a combination of special road paint, stop signs, and roundabouts to calm traffic and get drivers into urban driving mode. Roundabouts would be a bit much for a conservative city like Novato, but paint and stop signs certainly aren’t.

Different shoulder paint tells drivers that a change is coming, while a stop sign would clearly delineate where the change actually is. The key is to get drivers out of what is essentially an automatic driving mode and into a more attentive mode. On a rural road or Highway 101, one never expects things to jump out in front of the car. The road, through paint and a stop sign, will alert drivers to this change, making them more attentive to the increased complexity of city driving.

The Arterials

Novato’s streets are themselves unsafe. At a typical driving speed of 40 miles per hour, pedestrians hit have a very low chance of survival. At the same time, the streets can have lanes as wide as those on a freeway (about 12 feet), putting drivers back into a highway mode. These arterial roads should be redesigned for safety. Above all, that means narrowing lanes to 10 feet in a process called a lane diet.

Unlike a road diet, which removes lanes to provide space for a center turn lane or a median, a lane diet just narrows the existing lanes and gives the excess space over to parking, biking or sidewalks. Novato roads already have center turn lanes, medians, and parking.  It’s hard to imagine using 28 feet (two lanes plus narrowing existing lanes) for anything useful without land accompanying land-use reforms.

But four 10-foot lanes with a center turn lane would do plenty of good for street safety. Lane diets reduce crash rates, sometimes as much as 43%. Vehicle speeds, too, are reduced by road diets and lane diets, meaning those crashes that do occur are less likely to be serious. The fact that street capacity would remain essentially unchanged is an added political bonus. Introducing lane diets to Novato arterials would make them objectively better roads.

The Bike Lanes

We still need to deal with 8 feet of extra road width on our dieted streets. Rather than using it on sidewalks, Novato should convert its class II bicycle lanes to class I cycle tracks.

Cycle tracks are fully separated bicycle paths that have buffers or barriers between them and the automobile traffic and are best suited for roads with high traffic volume or high vehicle speeds, i.e., arterial roads.

NACTO’s bicycle lane guide recommends cycle tracks widths of at least five feet with a three foot buffer. If we combine the width removed from our road lane diets with the width of existing class II bike lanes, there is enough space for a cycle track going in either direction. This improvement would increase safety for bicyclists by getting them away from car traffic without banishing them from the street entirely, increase safety for pedestrians by putting space between them and traffic, and increase bicycling by providing infrastructure appropriate to the road.

Costs are relatively minimal, at least compared to what we spend on road infrastructure. Cycle tracks typically range from about $100,000 to $165,000 per mile. For about $3.35 million, Novato could install cycle tracks on every arterial street in the city; it could do every rural arterial for about $970,000 more. Considering that we’re spending 270 times that on highway expansion, it might be worth more attention from TAM and city hall.

Such an expansive investment in bicycling in Novato would be transformative. While transit and walking aren’t terribly efficient modes of transportation through most of Novato, the bicycle is. If the city provided the infrastructure for in-city trips, it would cut down on traffic and improve the health and quality of life any resident that can ride. At least one study found that cycle tracks increase bicycling by 250% and that in turn increases safety for all road users, from driver to pedestrian, by making drivers more aware of vulnerable users and calming traffic.

Last week's post exhorted Novato to stand and say enough: enough death, enough apathy. Rather than leave it up to the process, Novatans should tell the council to fix gateways roads, shrink lanes, and invest in bicycle infrastructure that fits the needs of the road. It’s not an issue of road capacity, for it would hardly change. It’s an issue of political will on the part of Novato’s councilmembers, city staff, and residents. They have the power to make safe their city’s streets. Or they could call deaths on their streets inevitable and do nothing at all.

Mapping the Interurban

In 1941, the last ferry and the last train ran on the NWP Interurban commuter line, and Marin was handed over to the battle of its life against the car-centric development unleashed by the Golden Gate Bridge. Marinites, unlike most of the country, won that battle, and we maintained the transit-oriented development passed down from the age of rail. Most of us, though, don't even know what it looked like, and the best thing we've got are grainy maps and schedules from the 1930s. That's all well and good, but hides the structure and sinews of the system. The purpose of contemporary transit mapping is to combine not just where a system goes, but how and, to a lesser extent, when.

I've created two maps that do just that for the Interurban. The first is in an "old" style. Old printing techniques could only print two or three colors. Given that the Interurban shut down in 1941, I thought a map inspired by that era made sense.

The second map is the same thing, but in a "new" style. With contemporary printing techniques, we can do as many colors as we like. The advantage is that individual lines can be individually colored, snapping into focus what lines go where.

As you can see, it was quite a comprehensive system, at least for Central and Southern Marin. Northern Marin was served by intercity rail, more akin to Amtrak than BART, and was not part of the electric rail system highlighted here.

Mid-Week Links: Perfect Storm

San Francisco Bridge Before the Storm A ludicrous amount of stuff is happening this week in the City. Though much of the week has already gone by, Fleet Week and America's Cup, along with others and your regularly-scheduled weekend fun, are still to come.

So take transit and spare yourself the pain of hunting for parking (though if you do, download SFPark and get your passengers to tell you where to go). If you don't live near a stop, use one of the park & rides. Golden Gate Transit has the rundown for its added service. Unfortunately, that won't include Route 29 to Larkspur Landing, so you'll have to bike, drive, or walk from Lucky Drive.

So for the sake of your sanity, your nerves, and the good people of San Francisco, leave the car in Marin.

Marin and Beyond

  • Regional transit service to and from Marin will be the subject of a new study funded by the Community Transportation Association of America. All transit options are on the table, but whether anything will come to fruition is another story. The study is to be completed by 2013. (News-Pointer)
  • If your home shares walls with another, you've got a year to quit smoking. San Rafael will ban smoking in attached homes like apartments, as well as on downtown sidewalks, starting next October. (Pacific Sun)
  • 75,000 square feet of downtown Tiburon has been sold to real estate investment firm for an undisclosed sum. The sale means the buildings will likely receive some long overdue renovations. (IJ)
  • The stink of rotting algae at Spinnaker Point in San Rafael has raised the ire of residents and BAAQMD, though nobody who can do anything about the problem wants to pay for it. (IJ)
  • San Anselmoans took back downtown from the car for last Sunday's Country Fair Day, bringing out the young, the old, and the stormtroopers. (Patch)
  • Y'know that new train control system on Caltrain being paid for by High Speed Rail money? Yeah, it's a gigantic waste of money and won't do anything it's supposed to do. Just like the last train control system. (Oakland Tribune, Systemic Failure)
  • Apparently, President Obama wants to keep freeways out of the suburbs. The position Marin took 40 years ago has reached the White House. Sadly, Congress has yet to get the memo. (Washington Post)
  • And...: San Rafael needs a new parking manager, and it seems there's room for the office to do some reform. (City of San Rafael) ... Forcing people to wear bicycle helmets is a sure way to harm bicycling and make everyone less healthy and every bicyclist less safe. (NYT) ... The Ross Police Department faces dissolution if Measure D doesn't pass.  (IJ)

The Toll

This week, Hailey Ratliff was struck and killed by a driver. Eight others were injured.

  • Dalton Baker, a high school student, critically injured himself when he was clotheslined while riding his bike in Healdsburg. He ran full-speed into a parking lot cable that he apparently didn't see. He's lost part of his liver and may lose both kidneys. (PD)
  • Two pedestrians crossing the road were injured by a hit-and-run driver in San Rafael. The driver rear-ended another car, which in turn struck the pedestrians. Police are searching for the culprit. (IJ)
  • A four-year-old was injured after a driver pulling out of a driveway bumped him in Mill Valley. It's extremely important not to dismiss such incidents, as children are frequently killed this way. (IJ, Kids and Cars)
  • A woman whose tires disintegrated on the road lost control of her vehicle, crashing it and injuring herself in Novato. (Patch) ... A woman crashed her car into a Petaluma fire hydrant, injuring herself and causing a geyser. (PD) ... Two were injured when a driver wasn't paying attention to the road and caused a three-car crash in Santa Rosa. (PD)

It's Our Infrastructure that Kills Us

When a car and a person collide, survival is all about speed. Almost everyone survives getting hit by a car going 20 miles per hour; at 30, survival is a bit better than a coin toss at 55 percent. Only 15 percent of people survive a crash at 40 miles per hour. Novato’s main roads are legally limited to 35 miles per hour but, given a comfortable five mile per hour margin, are effectively 40 mile per hour zones. In some places, the lanes are as wide as those on a freeway, giving the illusion of safety at 50 or 55. Novato is a dangerous place to be a pedestrian, and it’s dangerous by design.

Last Thursday, Hailey Ratliff was riding her bike home from her new middle school. A recent transplant to Marin, the seventh grader was settling in well, and it seemed like the move would be a success.

Elsewhere in the United States, the ability to ride a bike home from school is a rare privilege. Many new schools are built with only the car in mind, along wide roads that lack sidewalks, let alone crosswalks or bicycle lanes. Only 15% of American children walk or bike to school, down dramatically from even 20 years ago when half could get themselves to and from their classes.

As she was on her way home, someone else was driving into town on Novato Boulevard. As the road winds through rural Novato and West Marin, cars can speed along at 50 or 55 miles per hour, an easy five or 10 miles per hour above the posted speed limit but we typically concern ourselves with.

As the driver would have just started to slow down for the first stop sign that marks the entrance to Novato, Hailey somehow got in the driver’s path. The SUV struck her with such force it left Hailey’s helmet and shoes in the road and threw the bike back into a telephone pole.

The road where the two collided is actually wider than the rural road just before. Drivers respond to visual cues better than posted speed signs to determine a “safe” speed. We all know what it’s like to feel like we’re driving safely, only to be pulled over for speeding. The new tunnel for Doyle Drive is an example – its wide lanes and easy curves are at odds with the 35 MPH posted speed limit. Where Hailey was hit, the eastbound lane effectively widens to 15 feet as the paint delineating the shoulder is almost worn away. The center turn lane that suddenly appears makes passing cars feel like they aren’t going so fast, giving the illusion that it’s safe to drive even faster than before. Though the speed limit drops to 35 normally and 25 during school hours, that road is built for 50.

So while the collision between Hailey and that driver was probably the result of inattention by one or both of them, it was the speed that killed Hailey Ratliff, a speed that we normally shrug our shoulders about. It’s a speed that Novato encourages through roads designed for cars, not people. Hailey should be alive today, but the negligence and auto-oriented myopia of Novato’s planners made that road entirely unsafe. It’s our infrastructure that killed Hailey Ratliff, and it will keep on killing us until we say enough.

Mid-Week Links: Rise Above

CA - Marin County: Fort Baker - Battery Spencer and Golden Gate Bridge

Marin and Beyond

  • Most of the residents planned for in the Civic Center Station Area Plan won't use SMART to get around in their everyday trips, but that doesn't mean the housing won't reduce per-capita greenhouse gas emissions; building homes within walking and biking distance to North San Rafael will do that. (IJ, Streetsblog)
  • Mill Valley has formally objected to its RHNA number, saying that 129 new housing units too many for the city to zone for. The city stopped far short of following in Corte Madera's decision to leave ABAG, with some councilmembers questioning how that could help. (MV Herald)
  • Very small apartments, on the order of 220 square feet, are being considered by a number of cities to attract the kind of young people that are just starting their careers and who view the city, rather than just their apartment, as their living space. (Sustainable Cities)
  • Amid opposition to athletic complexes at the San Rafael Airport and Hamilton, it's worth asking - is there actually a dearth of quality athletic facilities in Marin? (IJ)
  • If you commute to the South Bay and don't want to drive, it turns out you can transfer from GGT to most of the Silicon Valley shuttles at Lombard & Filmore, at least according to a new map of the services. It might take longer, but at least you can avoid 101 driving, then city driving, then more 101 driving. (Noe Valley SF)
  • Traffic congestion isn't everything, and it's important for planners to keep in mind the broader context of transportation costs to ensure dollars are spent for maximum return. Often, that means on something other than congestion relief. (Planetizen)
  • And...: San Rafael Target begins construction. (IJ) ... You don't want to drive into the City next week - trust me - but Golden Gate Transit has you covered. (GGT) ... The water taxi has arrived in Marin, offering for-hire services to Tiburon, Sausalito, and points around the San Francisco waterfront. (IJ)

The Toll

Thankfully, only one person was injured on the roads this week.

  • Three drivers, including a police officer, were involved in a three-car crash in Santa Rosa on Wednesday. It's unclear who was at fault, and only minor injuries resulted. (PD)
  • The woman who was hospitalized after a driver crashed his SUV into a downtown San Rafael restaurant last week is in stable condition. The crash is still under investigation. (IJ)

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.

End-Week Links: Flight

2009_05_21_sfo-bos_022  

Marin County and Beyond

  • Marin Transit has accepted a four-year contract with Golden Gate Transit. The dealwill result in lower costs for MT and a shift in supplemental bus service to an alternative vendor. MT plans to revisit the contract in two years to ensure its viable over the long term. (Marinscope)
  • Brett Richards has a new blog about the Ross Valley Sanitary District, and he wants to make sure everyone reads it. Richards, the former general manager of the RVSD, has fallen off the radar since quitting the agency under a cloud of scandal and bizarrely unprofessional behavior. (Patch)
  • Santa Rosa has rezoned part of Coddingtown Mall in preparation for the SMART station. The zone is a compromise between mall owners, who wanted to maintain their mall car-centered, and the city, who wanted the opposite. (PD)
  • Marin General Hospital is proceeding with its rebuilding efforts, and a draft EIR is now available for comment. The $500 million project would expand the hospital to 660,000 square feet and provide 919 parking spaces. (NBBJ)
  • Complaints of racial profiling, discrimination, and unprofessional behavior were aired in a Marin City meeting with the county sheriff's department. The county has pledged to work on the issues. (IJ)
  • To meet the environmental challenges facing Marin, from sea-level rise to car-dependency, we need to build where we've already built and strengthen our built and natural environments. (IJ)
  • Bikeshare got an official stamp of approval when the Federal Highway Administration released a guide of what makes a good bikeshare system. The burgeoning transportation mode isn't a bicycling panacea, and it's important for Marin and other cities to carefully weigh the costs and benefits. (Streetsblog)
  • And...: If the UN wants to herd us into public transit, it has a funny way of going about it. (Systemic Failure) ... Eliminating streetlights is an idea crazy enough to work. (Strong Towns) ... The Golden Gate Bridge will have an all-electronic tolling system by next year. (SFist)

The Toll

Five people were wounded on the road this week. Another two men died on the road, though both deaths could have been caused by medical events rather than the actual crashes that resulted.

  • A 68-year-old man crashed his SUV into a garage in Santa Rosa and died. It's not apparent whether the crash killed him or if he suffered a medical emergency, killing him and causing the crash. (PD)
  • Paul Borré died while driving in Petaluma on Monday, though it seems he suffered a "major medical event" that killed him, causing the crash. His daughter, who was in the car with him, survived uninjured. Paul was 41. (PD)
  • In Petaluma, a woman driving a car hit and injured Thomas Williams, who was walking his bike across the street in a crosswalk. She gave Thomas $60 for his bike, then sped off. Police are searching for the suspect. (PD)
  • A woman was seriously injured when a driver used an SUV to push her into a shop on Fourth Street in San Rafael during the Thursday farmer's market. The driver was taken in for questioning, and it's unclear whether it was an accident or not. (IJ)
  • Richard Marshall seriously injured himself by crashing his truck (perhaps while under the influence) into a tree in Novato. (Patch) ... A motorcyclist lost control of her bike and injured herself as a result on Highway 1. A driver injured another motorcyclist in the same area by making a U-turn into his path. (Marinscope) ...

The Third Happy Hour

Flatiron Saloon We have our third happy hour coming up, and this time it'll be somewhere with a real happy hour.

Join me and fellow transit & planning geeks/activists/enthusiasts/professionals at the Flatiron in downtown San Rafael on Wednesday at 6:00pm. Come late, come early; I'll be there with signage. If you're looking for a person, I'll be the bearded 20-something wearing a brown shirt about time travel. In a sports bar like the Flatiron, I suspect I'll stick out. See you out there!

Mid-Week Links will have to be delayed by a day due to some extenuating circumstances, but they'll be back tomorrow.