Questions remain as Richmond-San Rafael Bridge bike lane pilot program ends
SAN RAFAEL -- November marks the end of a four-year experiment with reserving one lane of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for bicycles and pedestrians.
Critics say it would be better used to reduce traffic congestion as people struggle to get to work in Marin County. Caltrans will decide how the bridge will be used in the future, but there may be solutions that would give everyone what they're looking for.
Ethan LeValley lives in San Rafael but hates those occasions when he has to take the bridge home during commute hours.
"Oh, I hate when I'm jammed up, dude!" he said. "I hate when it's bumper to bumper and they're just riding behind you and jamming you up, man."
It's especially frustrating since the lane reserved for bicycles is almost always empty.
"I want to get in that bike lane and drive real fast, so I'm not getting jammed up, know what I'm saying?" said LeValley.
Caltrans opened the lane in 2019 and bike activists rejoiced. But with a refinery on one end and a prison on the other, it's never gotten much ridership during the workweek.
"Right now, there are 21 bikers in the morning commute, that are crossing across a 3-hour time window. And yet, there's 18,000 cars during that 3-hour window," said John Grubb, Chief Operating Officer of the Bay Area Council.
The business advocacy group is pushing to allow cars in the third lane during the commute. In the past, that meant cutting off bike access during those hours. But now, the Council is proposing a compromise: put another set of moveable barriers on the bottom deck as well, and alternate the location of the bike lane according to the commute. Caltrans bought a barrier moving truck that sits at the Marin side of the bridge everyday, unused.
"And so, we're calling for...you know, USE the truck that you bought to open and close these lanes to let the cars through," said Grubb.
But the plan has challenges. First, the expense. It could cost 10 million dollars to add another moveable barrier, and there's a study underway to see if the old bridge could even handle the extra weight of the new barrier and cars. And it could cause another traffic jam for those coming off the bridge about a quarter mile up the road, where traffic goes back to two lanes as cars split off onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. Fixing that would cost even more.
Warren Wells is the Policy and Planning Director for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. He said, first and foremost, their main priority is keeping 24/7 bike access across the bridge, but they have their doubts whether another lane would solve the traffic problem for long.
"We know from decades of research that adding additional automobile capacity to congested corridors may work, may reduce congestion for a year or two, maybe a few. But eventually it returns just as bad, and then we're in the same situation again," said Wells.
But Grubb said Caltrans spends plenty of money on other projects, and they shouldn't be ignoring the mostly low-income people who must drive into Marin to work each day.
"I mean, the future if you don't do this--the future's pretty grim," said Grubb. "It's about a 15 minute backup the last time they studied it. The study showed it will grow to 24 minutes, per person, per day. And it will just escalate from there."
The Bay Area Council says its proposal also addresses carbon emissions by designating one of the three lanes as a transit and car-pool only lane during commute hours. The bike advocates say they prefer the money be spent in other ways but they just want to insure that access across the bridge is maintained .There may still be disagreement, but at least both sides are considering possibilities for ways to share their only way across the bay.