Bike lane on Richmond/San Rafael Bridge: "Faith-based" planning

Seamus O'Ramus

Dick Spotswood in the Marin Independent Journal:

The Transportation Authority of Marin made a good move recently when it voted to urge the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to shorten its “test” period from four years to six months for the under-construction bike lane on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge’s upper deck.

It followed the lead of Supervisor Damon Connolly, whose idea is that after a half-year trial, if peak period cycling across the San Pablo Bay span is low, the lane’s movable barrier should be shifted to allow westbound autos, buses and trucks to use the lane from 5:30 to 10:30 a.m. on weekdays. The remaining 143 hours a week would be reserved for cyclists and the hardy souls who’ll hike the 5.5-mile windy crossing and its approaches. That’s a fair compromise.

TAM”s board, composed of Marin’s five county supervisors and a representative from each of Marin’s 11 incorporated communities, voted 14-2 for Connolly’s compromise... It’s a loud message to MTC that at least one county cares about the tens of thousands of mostly East Bay-originating commuters forced to endure a 22-minute wait due to lack of a third westbound bridge auto lane.

According to TAM projections, in 2020 the delay will be 27 minutes. Even the Marin County Bicycle Coalition hasn’t formally endorsed the Richmond bridge bikeway, only saying that it doesn’t oppose it.

Outside of East Bay cycling activists, the push for 24-7 use of the cycling lane comes from MTC, whose Utopian hope is the Bay Area will someday replicate cycling in flat-as-a-pan Amsterdam.

The bridge bikeway is faith-based transportation planning. There’s no evidence that many cyclists will commute from Contra Costa to Marin. That’s because MTC refused to conduct a bike usage study. Their fear was if ridership was shown to be embarrassingly low, a multi-million-dollar bridge bikeway would have been a non-starter...

See also BDS outbreak in Marin and Marin County, meet Scott Wiener.