Marin supervisors support the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge bike lane experiment

Marin County supervisors are backing a plan to remove the bike lane on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge four days a week on a trial basis.

Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to write a letter to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission urging it to launch a pilot study to evaluate the effects of such a change.

Bay Area Toll Authority commissioners voted May 8 to move forward with the plan. The multi-use lane on the western shoulder of the bridge would be opened to motor vehicles during the morning Monday through Thursday.

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, known as the BCDC, must approve the proposal. The matter is expected to be discussed at the meeting this month or next month. If the committee approves, the plan would be implemented early next year and last about 12 months before being reevaluated.

The western shoulder lane, located on the upper deck of the bridge, was converted into a multi-use lane for bicycles and pedestrians in 2019 as a four-year pilot project. Last year, a part-time third lane opened on the east lower deck.

“Morning congestion has not increased since the portable barrier was installed,” Talia Smith, the county’s legislative director, told supervisors on Tuesday. “However, traffic accidents have increased 33% since the multi-use path was implemented, and the effect has been greater variability in morning commute times from the East Bay to Marin.”

The movable barrier, which separates the multi-use lane from motor vehicles, prevents minor accidents or immediate removal of stationary cars or trucks from traffic. Smith said a number of local employers have told the province that the difficulty of crossing the bridge in the morning has affected their ability to recruit and retain workers.

The proposal to open a third court four days a week was supported by the Bay Area Council, the North Bay Leadership Council, the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce, Kaiser Permanente, MarinHealth, BioMarin, Marin Sanitary Service, the Marin County Office of Education and the Marin Association of Public Employees.

“The commuters traveling over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge don’t have options to work remotely, and they don’t have options for public transportation,” said Joanne Webster, CEO of the North Bay Leadership Council. “These are commuters who usually work in the service sector. They are construction, manufacturing, hospitality and healthcare workers. These sometimes unpredictable travel times can cause employees to be late for work.”

Mark Shotwell, CEO of Ritter Center in San Rafael, said, “The vast majority of our staff live in the East Bay and must travel across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge every day. Commutes on the bridge can vary from 45 minutes on a good day to 90 minutes or two hours or more if there is an accident on the bridge.”

Max Perrey, director of policy for Aliados Health, a network of community health centers, said Marin Community Clinics has about 160 employees — 29% of its workforce — who live in the East Bay and commute across the bridge.

“Any additional time it takes to cross the bridge during travel time has a real impact on the lives of these workers,” Perrey said. “This in turn has a real impact on the health center’s ability to attract and retain a diverse workforce and ensure continued access to care for patients.”

However, Smith said the proposal was opposed by the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, Bike East Bay, Save the Bay, the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club and other nonprofits.

Warren Wells, policy director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, said, “The long commutes faced by East Bay residents who work in Marin, of which I belong, are the result of decades of exclusionary housing policies by the cities and villages in Marin. and has nothing to do with the multi-use path on the bridge.”

Bruce Beyaert, chairman of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee, said, “It makes no sense to close five miles of the San Francisco Bay Trail, which connects the North Bay and the East Bay.”

Beyaert said the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Berkeley “analyzed the data and concluded that the path does not increase congestion on westbound I-580, the number of crashes on the bridge or crash clearance times.” .”

Supervisor Katie Rice raised questions about the adequacy of the available data.

Rice said she reviewed a Caltrans report on the multi-use lane, and the writers said several times that they did not have access to information on the number of traffic accidents and the length of related traffic delays. Rice said she found it hard to believe the data wasn’t recorded somewhere.

But Lisa Klein, deputy director of mobility at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, told Rice that wasn’t necessarily the case.

“We get data from the California Highway Patrol showing how long it took for a tow truck to get there,” Klein said. “The question of when traffic will return to normal is not addressed.”

Earlier in the meeting, Klein told supervisors that the bridge averages 140 bike rides per weekday and an average of 360 rides per day on weekends.

Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters said this means only about 70 cyclists per day use the bridge on weekdays, as most cyclists ride there and back. She said that by comparison, the Golden Gate Bridge averaged 3,000 bike trips per weekday in 2021 and 5,500 bike trips per day on weekends.

Moulton-Peters, the province’s representative to BCDC, acknowledged the results of the UC Berkeley study, but added: “The lived experience of people we’ve heard from in this province and elsewhere is very different. We need to provide a more reliable commute for the people who come from the East Bay to work in Marin.”

Additional changes are planned for the bridge, including removing the toll booths on the east side and restoring a previous high-occupancy lane on the west upper deck. Planners are also exploring the possibility of using the multi-use lane as an additional lane for carpools and buses.

However, Klein said Caltrans has determined that the bridge needs structural strengthening before a third lane can be permanently opened for full-time motor vehicle use.

“It’s not an urgent need. The bridge is safe,” Klein said. “But in the long term this means extra weight on the bridge.”