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| 00:00:06.16 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:00:10.63 | Unknown | I can't help. Oh no. I'm not. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:20.91 | Unknown | Bye. you Thank you. I always go. |
| 00:00:26.88 | Unknown | You are listening to Radio Sausalito, a non-commercial Part 15 compliant radio station broadcasting great music and community information 24 hours a day. You can hear us on 1610 AM in Southern Marin and 1710 AM... On by pushing a button....as the audio accompaniment for Marin TV. Our FCC IDs are NWXAM1000 and NQ5FM10TX. on iTunes Podcasts, and the search for radio. Our FCC IDs are NWXAM1000 and NQ5FM10TX. On iTunes Podcasts, Search for Radio Saucy. |
| 00:00:41.58 | Jonathon Goldman | on by pushing a button. as the audio accompanies. It's one. |
| 00:00:47.23 | Unknown | All right. |
| 00:00:47.25 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:47.30 | Unknown | That's you. |
| 00:00:51.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:51.18 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:51.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:52.09 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:00:52.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:55.60 | Unknown | for Radio Saucyenne. Thank you. |
| 00:01:06.97 | Unknown | Thank you. You have me but you won't, you love me so You so and so you don't, I knew and I know Cause you told me so You just want the best for me, and I agree. So off I go to see you, try and be happy without me. |
| 00:01:21.74 | Unknown | I just won't. And... |
| 00:01:32.45 | Unknown | You're two-sided, baby. You made it an art waiting for your maybe. Well, maybe isn't smart. I'm two-sided, too dear. I want to be free. Why do I cry when I know what I want? Because I wanted someone to. |
| 00:01:43.54 | Unknown | Thank you. Oh, my God. |
| 00:01:51.79 | Unknown | No way. Thank you. Are we ready to go? |
| 00:02:00.03 | Unknown | Is this? Are we on? Okay, welcome everyone. do the Bus and bicycle advisory committee meeting. I was told it was the annual, but it's our first of the annual meetings, and it's a special one. This committee meets every month to work on It's a bicycle and pedestrian committee, but we're also including buses in this particular one, and we're working on So every month they get together. But this is a special meeting so that we can open it to the public both informationally, and we're both in person, but we're also on tape, and also to get people involved. Involved on an ongoing basis afterwards, but also to ask questions at this meeting. So, The bicycle and pedestrian committee was formed by the city council. going on two years ago. It's been in operation about a year and a quarter now. It's a resident committee. We have five members, and we have three of them here tonight, Dr. Edward Fotch, we have Tom Riley, and John Cox. And then we also have on the committee, we're lucky to have our city staff that works very closely with the committee, and we have Captain John Rohrabacher of the police department and our public works director, Jonathan Goldman. We also have with us tonight a lot of the groups and interested parties that work with us in these things, and they often come to the meetings. So we have Alicia O'Glocklin from the – am I close? O Laughlin of the Marin Bicycle Coalition. We have Katie Laughlin, who's directing everything technically. She's with Public Works. And we have Andrea Lucas of the Park Service. We have Chief Tejada of our police department. And we have Dan Blythe of the Golden Gate Ferry. So I'll turn it over to Dr. Fotch, who will be leading the meeting tonight. |
| 00:03:58.91 | Ed Fotch | Thanks, Tom. I appreciate all your time, both the folks here, of course, the speakers, as well as the folks who are tuning in from home. My name's Ed Fotch. I've lived in town for about 35 years. live on the south end of town, and I chair the pedestrian bike committee. I have four kids who claim they've grown up, but they're still around a fair amount, and obviously we all live in a great town and we want things to be as terrific as they can be. The committee, the pedestrian bike committee, has been meeting for about a year now, and we're happy to share some of our efforts with you, some of the stuff we found that we frankly didn't know going into our efforts. And we'll get to that, but first we're going to start with a bus update. Let me just say a quick word about the bus and the bike and the timing. One of the reasons that we really wanted to do this meeting now is that this time of year, we're getting right to the end of the high volume of buses and bicycles. It's hard to get people excited about buses and bicycles on a rainy February day. It's sort of out of mind. There's a 100-day period |
| 00:05:06.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:14.12 | Ed Fotch | where it's kind of top of mind and top of conversation here in Sausalito. And so we really wanted to get this meeting with a year of experience, at least from the and some accomplishments both from the bus and the bike standpoint. We're going to start with the bus update, then we're going to go to the committee Both committee members and some staff reports were fortunate to have folks from the Park Service as well as the Ferry District And then we'll kind of walk through a number of things. We have 60 slides to get through in 60 minutes, and I've already burned four minutes of them. So we're going to be on the hop tonight. And then we have saved time. for Q&A. And for folks at home, if you want to email questions, in theory, we're going to be able to view them at SausalitoForum at gmail.com, and you will see that email address pop up probably a dozen times throughout this, so if you haven't gotten You'll get it next time. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce Captain John Rohrabacher, who's going to talk about bus updates. |
| 00:06:17.31 | John Rohrabacher | Thank you. Hi, good evening, everybody. My name is John Rohrabacher. I'm a captain with the police department. It's a pleasure to be here tonight to talk about buses. I can say that now after about a year of working on them, and it's mostly good news. At least I hope it is still. So our story with the buses started really in the summer of 2013, and many people in the community voiced their thoughts and opinions about the buses loud and clear. And the theme was pretty consistent. The buses were noisy. The buses were smelling. they emitted a gob of pollution. And you know, they added to the congestion on the Alexander South 2nd Richardson Bridgeway corridor. And in addition to that, a lot of people just didn't like the driving behavior of the bus drivers. And oftentimes they were speaking on their public address systems as they narrated their tours. And so by the end of the season, you know, we got the message and the city council asked us to do a little work on, on, you know, what was available to, reduce the amount of bus traffic coming into Sausalito from the south end of town. So while we were doing our research And by that, I mean contacting other people who had similar problems, like, for instance, San Francisco had the problem with the buses in the Alamo Square neighborhood. And, you know, they were a significant help to us to share their experiences. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was a big help with navigating that minefield of what rules were allowed to be implemented, what kind of dealings did it take to work out with the Public Utilities Commission. So while we were doing that pleasantly for us, one of the drivers and owners, actually, the owner, general manager of Grayline Tours, Ray Sarjone, who's member of the Saucydo Chamber of Commerce, Contact the chamber and offer to host a meeting of the of the San Francisco Tour Operators Association. So Una, I met with Una Kavanaugh and Jeff Shrash from the Chamber. A couple of representatives from the tour bus operators group, and we talked about the problems, and Ray said that give him about a month and he would come back with some proposed solutions, and we would set up another meeting. So that's exactly what happened. About 30 days later, we met and came up with what we thought was going to be our first a good step toward solving some of the problem, we crafted a voluntary agreement. Next slide, please. So we went forward with the voluntary agreement, and I'm sad to say that it didn't work out anywhere near as great as we thought. Asking the drivers to exit, you know, to the north of town, some of them were immediately cooperative. Others, others after they started doing it were a little less so and so we reported back to council that the volunteer agreement just wasn't going to work and so we went back to the table this time with a little bit more of a enforcement and stronger set of rules. So city council directed us to come back and look at an ordinance that included some key things, and that was that there would be, of course, no bus is allowed to go southbound on Bridgeway after they leave the bus parking area on Anchor, and to declare that all of Bridgeway and the corridor of Alexander South, Second and Richardson would be a quiet zone. And so that's what we did. Next slide. And so in May, we had our first reading of the proposed new Municipal Code Ordinance with the Council. Um, A few weeks later, we were able to do our second reading on June 10th, And then the way the law works is 30 days later, it became law. And so on July 10th, the new rules were in place and we expected cooperation. And my last slide, please. So the question now is, is it working? and from our the police department point of view It mostly is. We had mostly immediate compliance because, after all, we did a significant amount of work with all the other groups. A large amount of outreach, and I laugh about this sometimes, when we researched with the California Public Utilities Commission about how many licensed operators there are in California, there was 8,900 on the list. and even though they didn't all come into Saucido some days, it seemed like it. I've used that line before. And we had to whittle that list down into something that was manageable for us to contact by both letter and email and phone calls and whatever. And of course, we reached out to about 200 of those, which we thought were the ones that were repeat customers. Even with that, there was a couple of what we would just call knuckleheads, the ones that just didn't get the message. And so a couple of citations later, They're in compliance as well. And so... Now mostly what happens is we get... an occasional like a 45 foot long coach, mostly they're white with some name on the side, and they come from out of state. And we have to admit that we did not really do any out of state outreach Thank you. And so what we're doing now is people are kind enough to send me a message saying, hey, on Sunday at 145, I saw this bus come through. These were the markings on it. And I contact that company and I advise them of our of our new law, and actually most of them are very, very happy to get the news. The drivers really don't want to get a ticket, and they're very cooperative. So I really don't have any repeat offenders. But I want to say before I close that there's a little bit of thank yous in order here, The community was terrific in supporting our efforts. After all, it's, of course, on their behalf, but without the extra sets of eyes, reporting things to us, it would be very difficult to do. And so we really appreciate that. I really appreciate the help of the chamber and taking the lead in getting those first meetings set up. And with Ray Star joining from Grayline, he was great. And Also helping us out was Frances Gorman. I don't know if you know Frances. She's a member of the San Francisco Tour Guides Guild. and she works privately to be hired by the different companies, and she wanted to be involved so that when the companies hired her to do a charter tour, She could tell them, hey, by the way, these are the rules in Sausalito. and please adjust your time frame to leave sufficient time to leave town going to the north. And so she was wonderful as well. The San Francisco Tour Operators Association group was, by and large, most of them were very cooperative. And for that, we are thankful. And so I think we'll have questions later. So that's my few minutes there. |
| 00:13:24.19 | Ed Fotch | Great. Thanks, Captain John. I know that we were all very surprised to find that your voluntary agreement didn't work. I found with my children, voluntary agreements always work as long as they're mandatory. And Captain John did such a terrific job. And for those of us who live in the south end of town, and I live at 2 Alexander, which is the first house in town on the water side, it's a noticeable difference. I know for a fact that the creator of Gumby lived in my neighborhood because that was the spiel that they used to say as they went by. And in a thousand years, I may forget that. But I haven't heard anything about Gumby for a period of time. So I appreciate that. So Captain John did such a good job. We thought, well, if he did that well on that, why don't we just give him the bike thing? |
| 00:14:07.04 | John Rohrabacher | Thank you. |
| 00:14:08.98 | Ed Fotch | But he was. |
| 00:14:10.65 | John Rohrabacher | Thank you. Okay. |
| 00:14:12.62 | Ed Fotch | Smart enough not to take the bait. So moving on to bicycles. So this is an image that we've all seen on Bridgeway. And my sense is that there's a bunch of people who, like this little balloon, are so unhappy with all these spikes. But knowing some bikers, It's a lot of bikers who are unhappy with all these cars. And so there's a fair amount of unhappiness. And then, of course, you have all the tourists who come here because they think we're all so happy. The reality is that there are folks in town who swear by bikes, there's others who swear at bikes, and there's some, like me, who it sort of depends on where it is. When I'm trying to back out of my driveway and I can't get out, I'm not too happy with the bikes. teaching my kids to ride or I'm riding out of the ferry to catch it into the city, you know, then I'm certainly much more in tune. So let me just say that our sense as a committee is that the charge of the committee really isn't let's increase the number of bikes or decrease the number of bikes, but let's – because those are really issues, as we'll discuss, that are a little bit beyond our pay grade. What we're trying to do is make things better for everyone and to work through the issues and we started that with sort of a discovery piece which I'll speak to next. But just to let you know who the folks are. So Patricia Pegman lives actually in my neighborhood. She lives on Alexander Avenue. And she, as she's been there for a few years, and she can't be here tonight. She sent a quote saying, I believe that Southlady is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I have concerns about the impact and the dramatic Increase the number of bikers, mostly rentals and tour buses. This committee gives me an opportunity to become informed and look for solutions that are agreeable to residents and visitors. And I encourage people to attend our meetings, and we'll talk about those meetings here in a minute. I regret I'm unable to attend. Patricia is not an avid biker, but she walks through town, and she has a real strong feeling about stuff and she's been a terrific member of the committee. Also is Bob Page. has been in town with his wife, Sherry, for 12 years. They're raising a family. He works in IT, volunteers locally. not only on this committee with the Fort Baker Task Force, Sausalito Village, he previously volunteered for the Women's Club Preservation Society you And interestingly, he's on the board of trustees for the Cheetah Conservation Fund of Namibia. So his experience herding cats is perfect for our our committee. |
| 00:16:48.87 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 00:16:50.88 | Ed Fotch | We are... This stuff's available online, so if you like it. At any rate, our first meeting was a year ago. It's typically the first Monday of the month at 6.30. We have representatives that are here, Jonathan and Captain John, and we'll be hearing from them tonight. and my co-committee members who will be also doing some presentation tonight. But we've also met with GGNRA and the Bridge District and the Bike Coalition, Alicia is here, the transportation authority of Marin, bike vendors, and the county supervisors. Because one of the things you find is we focus on bikes when they come into Sausalito, but the reality is by the time they got here, they went through five other jurisdictions. Okay. And everyone gets a bite at the apple from a signage standpoint and a regulatory standpoint. So it's hard to say, well, we're going to do something on our own and not collaborate with all these other folks whose space or jurisdiction they run through. Our agendas, our minutes, our resolutions are all posted online. So what we're going to talk about tonight is things we learned and research that we did or commissioned, key steps we've taken, plans going forward, and opportunity for citizens to get involved. And along the way, we're going to have a kind of a... cornucopia, a smidgen of presentations from various folks here who will introduce themselves. So you really get a sense that there is quite a bit going on as it relates to bikes. Our initial focus really was safety, and I mean safety in the broadest sense of the word. Safety isn't just when the ambulance shows up. I ran a business emergency department for 10 years. I'm familiar with that version of safety, but it's also a safety issue when a person can't come down their front steps and get on the sidewalk without having the bejesus scared out of them because you've got bikes screaming by on the sidewalks. There's all kinds of versions of safety, and so you should hopefully think of that as we did in the broadest sense of the term. Optimize bike flow and minimize angst. It wasn't increased bike flow, it wasn't decreased bike flow for reasons that we'll discuss. Those are tough things that are probably beyond are charged. We did surveys of the citizens and bikers and merchants. We'll share some of that. Tom Riley will share some of that with you. We've made a half dozen recommendations that are quite specific to the council. And there's an update to the bicycle and pedestrian plan that's currently in progress. So among the things that we found, Um, is that the city's options as we understand them to increase or decrease by traffic in general as opposed to where they park or those kind of things, is relatively limited. It's limited by California law, and we'll get into a little of that, but Just putting up a sign saying no, thank you. which some folks would like and other people would like to do that with cars or tourists in general. And anyway, that's really not an option based on state law. The other thing is we can't say, well, you're a citizen in town, so you can bike one way, Someone whose visitor has to bike another way. It just doesn't work that way. Again, these are Sacramento, at least, if not constitutional issues, that are slightly above where we sit. The city has had no law regarding bike parking on the sidewalks or bike riding on the sidewalks. We're going to talk about both of those issues tonight. One of my pet peeves is a gaggle of tourist bikers are going through and enjoying the view at exactly one quarter mile an hour. But you can't say you have to write single file. Now there are, and Captain John or Chief Todd can If they really block traffic, there is a through flow of traffic that can be enforced, but of course is that really where you want your police spending their time? That's another issue. Sign is a challenge, as I mentioned. There's five jurisdictions. If you biked across the Golden Gate Bridge and wondered where is Sausalito, or how do I get to the ferry? Thank you. and you're a tourist, there's zero chance you would know until you actually got there. There's just no cohesive signage. We're working on that. There are folks, and I was among them, saying, boy, those guys in those tight outfits that fly through town and don't stop at the, at the stop signs, we ought to give them tickets, and then we're going to get some revenue. But the reality is we don't get much revenue from tickets. Somebody does, but it isn't us. As I understand it, it mainly goes to Sacramento, you know, like all the rest of our money. So the option to charge rental bikers and, you know, for the vendors themselves don't operate here. They don't have, as the attorneys would call it, a nexus here. So just sending them a bill. because they're making money in Sausalito is a really neat idea, but it frankly doesn't work because they would either ignore it or send it back, which doesn't mean that there should be no discussion about the finances associated with bikes and what they bring to or take from the community. But it's just not as easy as just, you know, just send them a bill and that'll work. So what I want to do now is talk about bike surveys and citizen surveys and merchant surveys, but actually I don't want to do that. I want Tom Riley to do that, so Tom, it's yours. |
| 00:22:03.65 | Tom Riley | Thank you, Ed. So my name is Tom Riley. My wife and I are nine-year residents here at Sausalito. We live on Atwood Avenue, just above Bridgeway. And we have a four-year-old son who spent his whole life here in town. So we are residents, pedestrians, and actually bikers, and we're introducing our son into biking. So we have a lot of interest around this topic. I thank the city council for creating this committee and giving me the opportunity to serve. Now, when I'm in Poggio's or at Starbucks or at Barbacci and I meet another resident, I say, how about them bikes? And boy, I've got a good hour discussion instead of, you know, it used to be about how's the weather or how about Niners, but I get a lot of good topics on the bikes. And I do appreciate serving with the folks here and our other committee members and Tom, representing the city council. We're making great, great progress. So one of the things is we're here to represent the community, and the community includes our residents, our merchants, the people visiting into our town. And so what we wanted to do was learn as much as we can about the community's interest on this topic versus our own biases. And so we started out really doing a series of surveys, and so we wanted to learn more. about the bikers And so we conducted a survey for them. We want to learn about our residents and where their concerns were. And we also want to learn from the merchants. And so we have – we've done some extensive surveys on a budget of zero. So we really look for volunteers and low-cost ways to do these surveys. But we do have some good insights, and we'll give you some highlights today. But the further details we can make available to everyone who really wants to see these survey results. So first off, on the bike census, we actually had a volunteer talk to a lot of the bikers and get some inputs, but we also counted. using a camera that was near the entrance to town, just the visitors coming in. And the first thing we counted, and one of our volunteers did this, was to understand the difference between the recreational riders who are passing through town and the renters. And we've noticed a difference in the times that they ride through. So the recreational riders really peaked around 11 o'clock. And the renters, who were the visitors in town, started peaking right around 1 o'clock, so about a two-hour later shift. The actual numbers are almost equal, but if you add it up, you can have 1,800 to 2,000 plus bikers on any given day coming through our town between the mix of these. But we have a good sense of when they peak. We then wanted to know when we interviewed the visitors, how did they learn about Sausalito? And it turns out a couple things. Most of it's family and friends, a lot of Internet. If you go on the Internet today, riding across the Golden Gate Bridge is considered one of the best rides in all of California. And all of the guides talk about riding here, what have you. But family and friends is a key thing. And we're actually surprised of the number of people riding into town as visitors on rental bikes that actually are from the Bay Area. It is a very popular thing for people in the Bay Area to just, they want to spend the day, they bring their family or what have you and come riding across the bridge and come into our town. So it's not all tourists from overseas or even other states. uh... we didn't want to get a sense of You know, how much money do they spend when they are here? And we just can we ask that question of the people as they were standing waiting for a ferry or just arriving or just about to leave actually, how much they spent. And it turns out that over 75% of these visitors do spend money, they spend over $30 with us You then, you know, multiply that by the number of people coming in. This is very good for a lot of our merchants and, of course, our tax base. And so there is a number of spend coming from these folks. There's a lot more details we have on the surveys of the bikers, but I'll give you a sense also. We did as best we could an outreach to the residents here. And we had a survey period from January 2nd to March 31st where these results we're sharing with you are from. But this survey does remain open. We want to hear from more of the residents. And so you'll see on this slide, if you send an email to SausalitoBikeSurvey at gmail.com, we'll invite you to participate in the survey so we can hear your opinions and your ideas. It's not only just answering questions, but there's open text fields that we want to learn more from the residents on. But we did reach out through Sausalito Currents, Nextdoor.com, Sausalito Village Newsletter, MarinScope. We had some interviews on the radio. You should just get the word out, and we had some good results. So first off, this is just a pie chart showing where the residents' respondents actually live. Not surprisingly, a lot of folks in the south end of town are very focused on the biking issues. We had a lot of responses there, but you can see we have some representation from each of the different districts. And, of course, we'd like to get broader participation. So this question is, how do you, you know, between driving your car, which is the top bar, walking and riding bikes, we wanted to get a sense of our residents, how they like to get around town. And no surprise, they use their car to get to work or complete errands. But when it gets to doing errands or recreational use, we see walking and biking, you know, a large number of respondents do like to get out and walk in town and like to bike. So we know that we have to really represent our residents who do both those things being on the pedestrian and bicycle committee. Now, this is a very complicated chart, but I think if you look at what the negative is on the right side of this chart. So if we look at the darker colors, the question says, in these different categories, how do they impact your life as a soft-suit or resident? And to no surprise, the two categories that really jump out that have a negative impact on our residents are the tourists on rented bikes, which is the second row, and the recreational riders that are coming through town. which actually has an almost stronger negative impact of the folks coming through town. Less so than the commuter cyclists or even the last row, the second last row, of motorists and pedestrians, which are more favorable. So what this probably reaffirmed is what we know. This is an issue that impacts a lot of our residents, and we have to take seriously and look for ways to improve. |
| 00:29:08.59 | Tom Riley | interesting when you see you look long-term and you say how would you like our city to evolve over time And this is really how people feel about cars and buses and walking and bikes. There's a strong view that we want our town, from these responses, and this is 127 of our residents, that want our town to become more pedestrian friendly. We feel like we're a walking town. It's a town we want to get out, and a lot of us walk from our homes to the downtown areas or to the waterfront. So big interest in more pedestrian-friendly. Also to be more cyclist friendly. So I think we were just, you know, we're an outdoors, very eco-centric thinking town. Few want it to be more auto friendly. So this is kind of the flip side of some of the challenges we have. |
| 00:30:01.81 | Tom Riley | We also, and this was with the help of the Chamber of Commerce, we surveyed the merchants. And so we actually had volunteers that went along Bridgeway and visited all the merchants, but also went over to Caledonia and went off to some of the side streets, and we wanted to get a sense from as many of the merchants as we could how they view the issues around bikes. There's a lot of detail here, but just in the sense of time, to give you a summary, The merchants are pretty split right down the middle. There are, you can imagine the merchants who like people coming in and spending $30, getting a drink, getting a sandwich, getting a t-shirt or what have you, who benefit greatly from the visitors coming to town via the bikes, but then there's a lot that it is a distraction to their target clients. And the number one issue across the merchants was bike parking. and the congestion that the bikes create. And so you'll see in our recommendations in some of the work we've done around bike parking. But we don't want bikes on the sidewalks, chained to meters or trees or what have you. We want to get them off so that our pedestrians and the merchants' customers can have quick access. So that – before we move forward, that was just a highlight, just to let you know that we have been reaching out to all the different constituents. We're trying to learn and represent everyone's opinions here and understand where we need to address the community's concerns. And that's both our residents, it's our merchants, and it's those visitors who are pedestrians and bikes, bicycles that we also do represent here. |
| 00:31:44.48 | Ed Fotch | Thanks, Tom. Yeah, I have to say just on that information, it was really striking, you know, some of the things we found were, pretty obvious, but the way the merchants were split right down the middle on the, you know, in favor of them or not, so obviously that depends on whether they're or they're just, you know, kind of getting in the way. But that was sort of interesting. And the other thing that they did was that they were that you have to keep in mind is that a bicyclist becomes a pedestrian as soon as they get rid of the bike, as a driver becomes a pedestrian as soon as they park their car, so there's a little bit of overlap. We unfortunately don't have the data, and I don't think the data is any more available, but having been here for a number of decades, it used to be be that there were a lot, seemed like there were a lot more cars kind of jammed on Alexander Avenue coming down and now there's a bunch more bikes you might say well, maybe people are coming out by bike instead of coming by car And so that's an anecdotal observation, I don't have any data to back that up, and we're trying to sort through that. And when we can, get hard data so that we can make it. intelligent decisions. So you might say, well, you know, aside from all that neat stuff, what else have you done? So we've come up with some specific recommendations. And I should mention, not unlike the Planning Commission, We serve at the pleasure of the council and we make recommendations. We don't make any, thank God, we don't make any ordinances, so we're not responsible for done when they don't work, but we make recommendations to the city council. We've made a number of them. And I just want to hit some of the high points. The first is we are the Pedestrian and Bicycle Committee. So one of our first recommendations was to look into a pedestrian crosswalk at Richardson and 2nd Street, if you live on that end of town, you know there's only one official cross street there. that works for some people but not a lot of people. And if you go to Golden Gate Market, like a lot of people do when you cross the street, it's kind of a tough corner. And I understand that that's actually moving forward And if Jonathan says it's moving forward, you better believe it's moving forward. We also have some support for some other things that we're going to talk about, a thing called Vista Point Trail, which is actually, I think, a very important thing that we should all be, supportive of and we're going to kind of get into more of that. Support for more organized bike parking. This is in response not only to the residents, but to the merchants, because we've got bikes chained to trees, chained to bikes, chained to dogs, chained to anything in town when it's busy. including, and this is the committee, of course we're gonna have to operationalize this, charging for bike parking as is practicable. You know, we charge for people who park their cars. So we thought it was reasonable to look into that and actually doing it and creating the vehicle for that is more challenging, but we thought that was Ordinances require bikes to be walked on the narrow sidewalks of the south side of town. Now that may seem obvious, but we had actually quite a bit of discussion, and it was interesting because right at the Committee, we have people who said absolutely, you know, I'm scared to death to walk in the streets and those bikers shouldn't be on there, or if they are, they should walk their bikes. And then other folks said, yeah, but my kid is, you know, eight years old I want him to be able to bike and I want him in the street. And so we sort of went back and forth. Now this is now a recommendation that's gone to the Council that will be investigated by the staff, but we thought, well, at least they're on the south end of town when things are so narrow and you have so many homes and apartments that go right to the sidewalk that people will be able to step off of their front porch and not, you know, meet someone from Germany. Support for police surveillance and the traffic lights, particularly on Saturday and Sunday mornings if you go down, you know, get coffee at Trieste or Pojo or what's that small, oh yeah, Starbucks. You know, if you're just there, these bikers are just blowing by there. And I think the police have done a great job of some enforcement there or at least some warnings because at least in my observation, anecdotally things have gotten better. And then support an ambassador's program, and I'll talk more to you about that, and there's an opportunity to volunteer for that. And so with that, we're going to move over to Chief Tejada, who's going to talk a little bit about some of the work that's been done by the police department in collaboration with some of the other agency folks. |
| 00:36:08.10 | Chief Tejada | Thank you. Can you hear me? |
| 00:36:18.97 | Chief Tejada | Thank you. opinions and perspectives to the table and leading through all this to come up in some sense in some direction and some clarity on the issue. So I'll just go through these slides. Every year, this is now, I've been suspended for a hundred years. So we do an annual update to City Council on bikes and buses and our issues related to tourism. The primary focus is the El Patel, basically the very end of the area, where this picture shows you somewhat of what it used to be when I first got here. And we have a mixture of bicycles, pedestrians, and cars, including taxis and people waiting to pick up food. They're all sharing the same space and a rather unsafe situation from my perspective and really called out for us to put our thinking caps on and look at how we can improve the situation. |
| 00:37:05.81 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:37:05.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:37:45.25 | Chief Tejada | Thank you. a little bit more. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:37:54.29 | Chief Tejada | No. from my point of view in terms of the safety of the users, whether it's someone like a resident walking down the ferry or somebody in the car. So every year we have reviewed what has happened during the course season, which now pretty much is March through October. And we look at what we've done to make this year better and what we can do to improve for next year's visitors. So to date, we have, we've worked heavily in creating a collaborative approach to this. Anybody who wants to be at the table is welcome to sit at the table. These are the primary players in our collaboration on this issue. They're the head of the advisory committee as of last year, which is just a good |
| 00:38:59.29 | Chief Tejada | Thank you. of Commerce and Marine County Bioschool Television. Golden State Cherry and Blue Military have devoted staff to this issue. The Department of Public Works, of course, the Department of Building has been an excellent leader on this issue. And then my staff. And, of course, every year we bring classical companies to the table, and we start the season with sitting down with all of them that we can force to the table. Some of them come voluntarily, some of them not so voluntarily. But they are part of this issue and we have quite regular meetings with them to discuss what they can do, what their responsibilities are in helping us address the issues that are present for us on the principles. Just looking back at 2014, these are the action items. We, two summers ago, we took over some of the parking spaces and bought them to accommodate the bicycles. When we looked at that and the efficacy of that, we clearly saw that we needed more and we needed to create a larger dedicated bicycle parking space. So we have had a temporary closure in Crissy Lake to accommodate bicycle parking. And that will last probably for another two weeks when we see a significant decline in the presence of bicyclists. We, and went before City Council last March, he suggested we were put into play, El Fertal became a two-way street, and we built upon previous year's bicycle priority boarding system, which was significant in reducing the frustration of our visitors arriving in Salcido and running towards the ferry to make sure they got on the ferry to get back to San Francisco. The ferry capacity didn't quite accommodate the large numbers, and so people were standing around further ingesting that area. And so we came up with this bicycle tower boarding system. They come in, they go to the booth, they get a chip for a certain time of a ferry departure and allow them to enjoy the park and go enjoy the city. This year we had three full-time staff, line monitors who were handing out the boarding chips. These positions were paid for by five Thank you. line loaders who were handing out the boarding chips. These possessions were paid for by five of the major bicycle rental companies. We have the priority system booth, which was provided by Golden Gate Perry. Two additional full-time staff persons provided by Golden Gate Perry. I should also say that Blue and Gold also paid for the full-time staff to include line monitors. The chamber, of course, has their staff person in the kiosk. And then we also had to deal with all the taxis. We seem to have a little bit more taxis this year. So I have an officer assigned to that issue. We have a taxi stadium area on Bay Street along with the tour bus area. And then just recently, in response to concerns from the merchants, we went to City Council with recommendations for bicycle parking ordinance for the downtown area, and the City Council approved that, and that is in effect. Now, it is, you know, obviously for the end of this season, but it's a tool for us to reach out to our tourists and direct them to bicycle parking racks rather than meters and trees and dogs and wherever else they have advice. We hold regular meetings with all of the stakeholders. And then, from my perspective, there's always a emphasis on the safety, whether it's pedestrian safety, vehicle safety, or bicycle safety. It's a very complex issue that always, when I'm looking at situations, I'm looking to increase the safety and ensure the safety of the users of the road and the sidewalks, and that's really the position of that. Thank you. So there are fiscal considerations around this. And everybody asks, who's paying for all of this? Where's all the money going? And what are we getting out of it, et cetera? And so I broke it down into four areas. Staff costs, equipment costs, parking revenue, and visitor revenue. The staff costs have been completely funded by the bicycle wrestling companies, Blue and Gold, and Golden Gateberry. None of it comes out of the city of South Dakota Thank you. have been completely funded by the bicycle wrestling companies Blue and Gold and Golden Gate Perry. None of it comes out of the city of South Dakota general fund budget. Equipment costs are provided by Golden Gate Perry and I should have put them through some grants that we now receive. And then the booth that the staff work out for the bicycle priority boarding program is provided by Golden Gate Perry. There was a question on whether or not we have lost parking revenue because of the closure of Tracy Way. And as you can see, we have not seen a reduction in parking revenue. Tracy Way is considered part of lot one for parking payment, the parking payment system that's in place. If you pay for parking and tracing, you're paying into the system that is connected to Lot 1. So there you see the figures for Lot 1. There's no reduction in parking revenue. And then it's really hard to pull out what is the revenue from people on bicycles or people driving into the city, what's their promoter presentation. So I put visitor revenue as sort of a reference for people to look at and see what is our sales tax that's coming for people who do not live here. And that includes the sales tax. So that's just something for your reference to show you that we actually do have revenue coming into the city from our tourists. And then this is the Chamber of Commerce's slide. And do you want me to go through this? Yeah, sorry. So we have worked very closely, as I said, with all of the stakeholders, bicycle companies, chamber. We are trying to get everybody to the table that can help us focus our efforts to improve what we have in terms of the presence of bicycles, tourism on bicycles. And the lessons learned in 2013, we all agreed, were we needed to designate a safer bicycle parking area. We had it in Walk 1, and it was mixing cars and bicycles. And so we all agreed that we needed to designate a place where there was not that mixture. And Tracy Way was the most viable spot to do that this year. We needed a bicycle priority boarding system from May through October. with a definite need to prevent the backup of people into Elbertown. Tracy Way just standing there waiting to see if they got on the ferry. And then we needed to staff the ferry landing. We did have a volunteer ambassador program last year. It's very difficult to get people to work if they're volunteers and they decide they don't want to do it. And so it's a great workforce, but an unreliable one when you need someone there every single day. You're managing people. It's a tough, tough job managing people who are anxious about getting on the ferry. They've just written into town. They want to park the bike. There's a lot of activity going on there. And so we did have the Priority Boarding Program, funded by the Gold of the six bike ride-thruld companies. And the Chamber took a lead role in that. So again, City staff, and I don't have the resources to, the staff resources to have some of the managed staff. So the Chamber stepped up and the cabinet managed the hiring, the vetting, the recruitments of these people, and then worked with vice versa companies to work out the percentages that they would pay to cover those staff costs. And she did a fabulous job, and we really are very grateful One, two, three. to work out the percentages that they would pay to cover those staff costs, and she did a fabulous job, and we really are very grateful to Luna and her chamber for stepping off to do that. This is the way it is now on Tracy Way, a more organized and a dedicated parking space that drastically reduces that unsafe condition that we have on bikes, cars, and transportation. |
| 00:48:04.56 | Ed Fotch | Great. Thank you, Chief Todd. Again, there's going to be questions for the folks here, and also you can email your questions to Sausalitoforum at gmail.com. I was sitting and thinking as I was up here that poor Tom Theodoros or any member of the city council must just be frightened to death seeing me sitting here. I'm not only unelectable, but Tom and I are actively running from office. So with that, we're going to turn things over to Jonathan Goldman, who is the city engineer and also head of public works. |
| 00:48:30.53 | Unknown | You have a gamble. Look at this. |
| 00:48:44.23 | Jonathon Goldman | Thanks very much. Thank you all also for being here this evening, and I'm sure that your numbers are also well represented online. This is being streamed as well as broadcast. It's going to be rebroadcast on Marin government and will be archived, so if any of you want to refer back to things that you've seen tonight or if you know of others that might be interested in this information by all means look it up you're also welcome to contact any of us if there are questions about anything that gets presented tonight and this PowerPoint will also be available on the city's website. I'm not sure that it's available at the moment, but it will be shortly after. I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time on this, but as was kind of introduced earlier, the city is actually required to have a pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee. And it's not, you know, an absolute mandatory requirement. It's a requirement of some of the potential funding sources that that become available to the city for making improvements so that the residents and taxpayers here don't have to pay for them out of taxes or other fees that the city collects. One of the requirements of that program is that we have a regular update of our bicycle and pedestrian plan. Our plan was last adopted, as I recall, in 2008. We had the benefit of Transportation Authority of Marin, which is the congestion management agency for Marin County. And in that capacity, they've retained a consulting team to update bike and ped plans for eight cities and towns and the county in to help keep us in compliance. And one of the other benefits of that process is that that it provides some |
| 00:50:24.23 | Unknown | but, |
| 00:50:52.09 | Jonathon Goldman | unification or regionalization that Dr. Fauci alluded to is missing from a lot of the planning that happens. He was talking about signage. But we currently have this project underway funded by TAM, Alta Planning and Parisi Transportation Engineers are the team. And I'll, again, just kind of fly through the slides. The chronology, 1975, I think was probably the first. Alicia may know this slide deck better than I do at this point. But our master plan in 2008 and then with 2014, we will, and maybe into 2015, we'll have an update specifically for Sausalitoito their process is also one that we're taking advantage of our pedestrian bicycle advisory committee for and then ultimately we'll be taking advantage of the City Council to get public participation in residents other people who are interested in influencing that plan it's a part part of their scope of work to make sure that opportunities for that kind of input are created and that people have a chance to influence what the plan looks like. The purpose, just off the slide, develop a vision, identify and prioritize community needs, and then help us compete effectively for grant funds. So they'll be updating information. We've emphasized, and the survey that Pedestrian and Bike Advisory Committee did helped to some extent. Sausalito is also an age-friendly community, and because of the need to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act, we've indicated to the consultants that we want to emphasize pedestrian components to a much greater extent than what was done in 2008. I alluded to the opportunity to identify regional multi-jurisdictional gaps in connectivity. They will also be estimating costs, prioritizing projects, and then producing an updated plan. Here's the 2008 map, and I'll leave it at that. That's really the end of that piece. No, this is still a slide from that. So not just facilities, sorry, education, including the Share the Road campaign, encouragement in the form of the Bike to Work Day, the three-foot law that may come up in the Q&A later, and then bike parking is another area that we're probably on the forefront of, but I think that these consultants in our plan update can also include those elements. November 3rd is when there will be a public workshop here in Sausalito with the consultants. They've already actually met with our pedestrian and bike advisory committee meeting. There will be more information about that as that date draws nearer. And then there aren't dates on any of this, but there are subsequent. There's a technical advisory committee that I happen to sit on that helps steer the consultant's work. subsequent there's a technical advisory committee that I happen to sit on that helps you know steer the consultants work we will have another meeting and my intent at this point is that that that would ideally happen either at the City Council although there's a milestone subsequently for City Council hearing but you, more opportunity for public participation in the process before we get to a final plan part of their work. |
| 00:54:48.02 | Jonathon Goldman | All right. This is Dan Blythe's slide. It is working, especially if it's on. Dan Blythe is here with us this evening as a representative of Golden Gate Ferry. And I'll be happy to advance slides for you, Dan, if you tell me what you want. |
| 00:55:05.72 | Dan Blythe | problem. Thank you. I'd be happy to advance that. Okay. So I'm Dan Blythe, a relief supervisor for Golden Gate Ferry. And a lot of these things have already been mentioned by the chief here, but I'll go over some of them too. But through collaboration, I've worked there three years as a relief supervisor in that this year, 2014, has been the smoothest I've seen it. And a lot of it has to do with the changes we made in the queuing area. Thanks to Jonathan, we did some relocating of the concrete planters to make a wider bike line. |
| 00:55:43.44 | Unknown | you |
| 00:55:43.76 | Dan Blythe | and also moving the bike racks out of that area to Tracy Way. Also, we did pavement markings just before your board to show the bikers that they should go to the left and foot traffic to the right, so that's helped. Okay, next slide. Also, as the chief mentioned, increased staffing and improved coordination and communication with the bike companies. Despite me saying the smoothest year has been 2014, as you can see up there, we've had more bikes already this year. As of August 2014, we've had 141,000, so we've exceeded 2013 already. And I might mention this is just Golden Gate Ferry bikes. That's the ones we count. Blue and gold. I'm not sure how many they have, but the general casual ridership is up as well. That's the, well, first it's Jim Swindler, our general manager, and that's three of our bike staff. And they're all college students. They're all back in school right now except the one in the green shirt. He goes to the College of the Marin, so he's available on weekends. Oh, yeah, and that was the bike booth, too. Yes. By the way, the bike booth, we started off having it towards the information kiosk at the beginning of the year. We ended up moving it towards the other end of Tracy Way near the restrooms because we found it was causing traffic congestion down in that circle area at the end of Tracy Way. So it's towards the restroom area, and it worked a lot better having it there. And right now that's the existing configuration. The green is the land side up here. And then the blue is the access pier. And then the gangway. And then the float, which is actually floating. So that's the way it is today. And the next slide. you can see that everything's changed in size except for the land site here. That'll stay the same. The access pier will actually be three times the size that it is today. the gangway four times the size, and the float will be twice the size. Now, the advantage of this, having the access pier so large, it will relieve a lot of the bikes that have been in the bike line and sometimes going down Tracy Way towards the Spinnaker restaurant. We're going to be able to queue up a lot more bikes in that area. The gangway being wider will allow us to offload the boats quicker. Right now, if you go back to the other slide, You can see how thin the gangway is. You can barely get two people side by side. But you can now back to the other slide. You can see the difference. We'll be able to have people offloading much faster, therefore getting the bikes on the boat faster. |
| 00:58:39.82 | Unknown | FAST. |
| 00:58:43.51 | Dan Blythe | I think that's, I don't know what the next slide, I don't think, okay, that's not. |
| 00:58:48.05 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah, this is back to me. One other project that is worth mentioning and that I was asked to just provide a status report on, this is all the way at the north end of town, Bridgeway, Bridge Boulevard here coming underneath the 101 undercrossing. And to the north is the on-ramp to northbound US 101. Gate 6 Road comes off this way towards Waldo Point. There's a commercial center here and this is really the intersection with the Sausalito Mill Valley bike path. It's a very complex intersection for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it's really heavily used by almost all, a significant number of the motor vehicles coming into Sausalito off of 101 in either direction for all the vehicular traffic getting onto 101 in this part of town. And just huge numbers of bicycles in both directions of all three types of bicycles. And again, I credit the pedestrian and bike committee's survey with the recognition that there really are three different modes of bicycles. I happen to be a commuter as frequently as I can. I live in Larkspur and blessed to be allowed to work in Sausalito. I also want to note that the survey identified commuter bikes as the most likable of all the groups of bikes. So I appreciate that. |
| 01:00:24.71 | Unknown | so I appreciate that we're |
| 01:00:28.39 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. Ha! |
| 01:00:29.07 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:00:29.98 | Jonathon Goldman | But all three modes of bicycles use this intersection to the extent that they're either heading north or coming back into Sausalito from points to the north. And the way traffic in both directions interacts with this bike path is unsafe. And with our charge to try to figure out how to make things better and make things safer and more efficient and more pleasant for all of the users of the intersection, the city of Sausalito kind of took over in a leadership role and was successful in getting grant funding from Metropolitan Transportation Commission to work with Marin County, who actually has, this is Marin County jurisdiction out here, and Caltrans, who is, even though this intersection is technically within the city limits, it's Caltrans' signals and part of their on and off-ramp sequence, so they have certain requirements that apply we hired competitively selected design consulting team went through identification of a number of alternatives there was a public workshop on those alternatives held in this room and and are at this point at 65% plans that have been submitted to to Caltrans for an encroachment permit to allow us to estimate and then ideally once once we get to final design construct some improvements here that will benefit not only the bicyclists southbound bicyclists who will be more firmly directed to to use the the bike lane onway if they want to, but also have a safer place for them to cross as pedestrians or even use the multi-use path here if they choose to. And then also improvements that benefit pedestrians in both directions, to and from Marin City and with the the additional protection of making sure that people who want to get in and out of the Waldo Point Harbor and the floating homes there make sure that they still have access and egress without having to be stopped by either pedestrians or bicyclists during that, during what they're trying to do. So that project is ongoing, and again, if people have specific questions about it or want more information about it, I'll be happy to provide that either during the Q&A or subsequently. I don't want to take any more time because I know there's still a couple of other things to be discussed. |
| 01:03:01.06 | Unknown | Uh, |
| 01:03:21.50 | Ed Fotch | Great. Thanks, Jonathan. just go back to this slide if I'm reading this correctly I would be surprised. |
| 01:03:28.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:29.02 | Ed Fotch | Because that is one complex slide you got there. So, but I think the answer is it's getting better. I think that's what that says. It's getting better. And this has not been something that we focused on, although we've had some updates. But clearly anyone who goes to the north end of town knows that that's a challenge up there, and particularly a challenge for commuters. So let me just remind folks at home that if you have questions, email the Sausalito forum at gmail.com. or make a donation. We have operators standing by. almost certain it's not tax deductible, likely illegal, but we could use some refreshments at our meetings. I want to talk briefly about the ambassadors programs. This is an idea that we've come up with. not only come up with, but we pilot. And the idea is to get some folks at least on the south end of town, because, you know, everyone has to, every biker who wants to come to Marin, unless they're, and the other side of the road that's going to be And the idea is to get some folks there, preferably some volunteers, although we may end up with some funding to engage the bikers both for safety and a few things, and we'll talk about this, but safety and to try to give them some sense that this isn't the Wild West. Now I can't tell you that the recreational bikers in their little snappy outfits are going to – and I like the outfits, by the way. I don't have one, and that's what the donation would be for. those folks are going to blow by. They know where they're going. And so this is really directed at visitors. and where you can give them information on walking on the sidewalks and on bike parking and basically engage them in town. I've been collaborating with VIPS and with the chambers on that, as I mentioned, We've done a couple of pilots. lovely and talented Patricia Pigman there with, you can see we need donations, folks. I mean, just look at the quality of our equipment. But the idea is that you engage folks in town, and all of us have spent some time in these pilots. And here's what I can tell you. I mean, people do stop. You can engage them. The number one question is, am I in Sausalito? Where is it? Or where's the ferry? Where is the ferry? And where do I get |
| 01:05:44.70 | Tom Riley | And where do I get breakfast? |
| 01:05:46.18 | Ed Fotch | Exactly, where's a good place to eat and all that sort of stuff. So, but if you want to say, hey, by the way, for the next half mile or so, walk your bike in the sidewalk. It's a great time to do it. If you want to say there's designated parking in the downtown, They absolutely will stop. They can be engaged. And so Our concept here is to create an ambassador's program that would be in effect in the busy sort of 100 to 150 days. We're going to pass out for those interested. I can tell you, just sitting there, residents came by and said, well, this is a great idea. How do I volunteer? So we actually have, a clipboard here that we'll pass around when we get to Q&A. And anyone who's interested in more information on that, and if you do volunteer, you get a very snappy vest that actually says ambassador right on it so you are official and a clipboard, which makes you even more official. But we think this is, as we start putting more framework around bicycles in town and where they should be and, importantly, where they shouldn't be and where it's most safe, It's great if you can engage them. We may have some temporary signage during the high volume days. We're working through some of that, so for those interested, |
| 01:07:01.95 | Tom Riley | May I just point out, Ed, he did conveniently locate the ambassador program 20 yards from his house. Very convenient for Ed. |
| 01:07:11.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:12.21 | Unknown | There's a huge advantage. Wow, is that driving up our property values. Thanks. |
| 01:07:17.38 | Ed Fotch | THANK YOU. Bye. |
| 01:07:17.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:17.97 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. |
| 01:07:18.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:18.30 | Ed Fotch | after. I want to talk now a little bit about Vista Point Trail, and we're lucky because we have Andrea Lucas here from the GGNRA, and she's going to walk us through this, but from the And I think that's a good question. We think that the opening of Vista Point Trail that Andre will talk about is really going to be helpful. It won't solve all our problems or world hunger or anything else, but what it will do is take the majority of the unstable, wobbly rental bikes and get them off of the steep part of Alexander Avenue where they interface with cars, and it's sort of a tough deal. So it's going to be sort of a better alternative. We've got some slides here. And, Andre, are you ready to roll? Great. Andre Lucas. |
| 01:08:02.21 | Andrea Lucas | Thank you. I'm really happy to be here tonight and see the very innovative and high amount of action items that you have completed in the last couple years. And I was happy to hear – well, I was invited – or our park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, was invited to one of the bicycle advisory committee meetings, and I brought this information about this trail and was very delighted at the support that I got from you all. This trail is proposed as an alternative to Alexander Avenue. It's an existing closed roadway that goes from Dana Bower's Vista Point down onto Lower Conselman Road and through Fort Baker. Just a little bit about the bridge bicycle traffic. We've had counts, and the Bridge District has had counts of about 5,000 cyclists a day on a big day. And combine that with hundreds of pedestrians going down Alexander Avenue, and it's really a disaster. On the weekends and after 3 o'clock on weekdays, The left side, you can see that bright white new concrete. That's the Northwest Bridge parking lot. That's where the cyclists come off on the west sidewalk. But on the rest of weekdays and sometimes on weekends, you have cyclists on the east side of the sidewalk too. And those are the ones that just flow right onto Alexander Avenue. Next slide, please. So the purpose is to provide a commuter link. It's to improve safety and de-stress the visitor experience. I think almost every time I've stood on Alexander Avenue, I've seen a mother on a bicycle screaming at her kid who's in front of her on a separate bicycle to stay to the right. You know, people are flying off the freeway in their cars, and it's quite stressful. We're expecting the commuter and recreational cyclists that are locals to stay on Alexander Avenue unless they want to use this future Vista Point Trail. And right now, if you are going to Sausalito, you don't even go into Golden Gate National Recreation Area, into Fort Baker. You just bypass it completely. So this is a real opportunity to bring thousands of visitors into the park. And that road also, I'll be excited when we can open it. We walked it the other day. The views are just spectacular. Next slide, please. So this is the end of the Dana Bowers Vista Point, the north end and the top of this historic road. It's the oldest road in Fort Baker, led down into Fort Baker. Next slide. And this is planned to be a small trailhead, leaving the bike trail that goes down Alexander Avenue as a fly-through, you could say. But it will have a place to stop, to get orientation signs to say that this is the way to Sausalito, and it will take you on down. You can see there's two lanes. Next slide, please. There's two lanes, and then there will be about three viewpoints on natural wide areas of the road. There'll be a dedicated downhill bike lane and then a wide, mixed-use uphill bicycle and pedestrian lane. That's what's planned now. So that's our preferred alternative. We've been working with the Bike Coalition, the San Francisco Bay Trail Project, the Golden Gate Bridge District, and Caltrans on this project to date. So we've had a lot of coordination. We've considered the access needs, emergency needs. It's a steep road in some parts, up to 16%, so we're doing grading, flattening it. And one of the big issues is lead cleanup and our funding for construction, as always. Right now we're funded completely for design, which is great. Next slide, please. So that's the next steps. We are just finishing our design development, coming up with railing ideas. We're going to have to have retaining walls. We're having a public meeting at the park. It's our general San Francisco public meeting where we'll be looking at our Trails Forever project you might have heard of. And that's going to include a presentation about this project where we'll show some of these design ideas. And then our construction documents should be finished next spring. Then we'll have to wait for the cleanup, the lead cleanup. And it's a bridge district project, and it's a big, complicated project. So we're working with them to see if we can maybe move this to be an early part, early phase of that project so we can try and get this trail opened. So again, really appreciate your support and interest. And We're about half-funded. Right now it's about a $1.5 million project. It's alternative transportation funds from the park. So when we get to this point where we are looking for, where we're trying to actually get our funding in hand, maybe political support might be good to have to help support that, or we'll be looking for grants also, and whatever funding sources we can find. So thanks. |
| 01:13:50.21 | Ed Fotch | Thanks, Andrea. I can speak on behalf of the committee. We think this is really an important effort. It will not be a perfect solution. I don't think it's going to increase or decrease the number of bicyclists. But you already have a sense of how this will work because on the weekends, the West Bridge sidewalk is open and folks naturally, unless they're recreational riders, but the tourists go down into Fort Baker. And it's a much better way for them to access Sausalito because they're not coming down that steep ramp on Alexander Avenue, commingled with the cars that, if you live at the base of it like I do, you nickname the divorce ramp because everyone's screaming at each other, whose dumb idea was it to make me ride up that great big hill and then have that ferociously terrifying ride down. It gives them a chance to come up gradually from Fort Baker and sort of stage themselves before they actually get back onto Bridgeway with more – excuse me, to Alexander Avenue with more cars and will mean that they're stopping there as opposed to my neighbor's driveways where if you come into Saw City, you know there's always a gaggle of cars that are stopped right there because it's the first time that they can slow down. So we're going to move on to Q&A now, but just again to reiterate, we're trying to take on a fair number of things, trying to do stuff that's high priority, focusing on safety as well as the comfort and ease of living here in town. We have a number of initiatives in process. We think this ambassador program is going to kick off pretty well next year. If you're interested, you can send your e-mail information. I just say interested in the ambassador program to Sausalitoforum at gmail.com. And with that, let me thank all the speakers here and see if we have any questions from the folks here or online. Jump right up to the microphone. |
| 01:15:44.96 | Unknown | Well, I'm just concerned because it seems to me, as I understand it, and I appreciate all of your work, there's some good stuff here. But it seems to me like we're accommodating the needs of the bicycle companies because there are just going to be more of them coming. And as attractive as this wonderful plan is to get into Fort Baker, it's going to attract more people and more people will be coming into Sausalito and I don't understand what the stop is on that. It's not going to be there, oh, we've had making enough money now, I think we'll slow down. That's not going to happen. So where's the end to this? |
| 01:16:24.29 | Ed Fotch | So I'm happy to let anyone address that, but let me just say a few things. One of the things we found at the beginning is that of our efforts in the bike committee, |
| 01:16:36.44 | Unknown | you |
| 01:16:36.70 | Ed Fotch | is that we don't have a lot of control over who comes into town and where they get their bicycle from. in a perfect world, maybe we would, and then we'd be responsible for whatever decisions we made. Unfortunately, I think the decision we came to or the point of view we came to is that the only way that we could discourage vikers is by having their experience be so miserable that not as many came. Unfortunately, that would be misery on us as citizens too because it would be clogged streets and clogged biking and a relatively unpleasant experience We're sort of looking at ways, and I know that the city staff and council are looking at ways to generate revenue to offset either lost parking revenue, if there is such a thing, or any additional costs. And the other thing that is very apparent is it isn't so much that people are dying to come to Sausalito, but the I want to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge is now being advertised and pushed by every hotel concierge and by every one of these travel sites. In fact, last week on KCBS, the local CBS affiliate said it's the number one ride in the country is to go across the Golden Gate Bridge. There is the possibility, and this is, again, in the works, particularly for the rental bikes, that there could be some staging in the Fort Baker area, particularly when all the bikes are going down into Fort Baker. Now, that could be a knife that cuts both ways, and we're just getting into looking at that, but if they drop their bikes off there and took a shuttle up, You still have as many people, but you'd have fewer number of bikes, and at least there's the theoretical possibility that that could occur. But I wouldn't want anyone to go away thinking, oh, what the bike committee is going to do is roll this back and change the habits of the concierge and all these folks, because, frankly, we don't feel like... We really feel like the only way we could do that effectively and get people not to want to come across a Golden Gate Bridge is just make it so miserable here. that we would be sharing in that misery. |
| 01:18:40.73 | Unknown | I would just say. I would just say that in the back of my mind, I'm wondering if we need to step really far back and approach this at a state level and have some legislation. There must be other cities that are having similar problems, maybe not as much because this is the most popular one, but something at a state level that – puts a legal stop, something that we can do to defend our city so that we can continue to manage it from within instead of having it being managed from without. And... Thank you. |
| 01:19:13.25 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. And I'd love to hear from the other members of the committee or the staff, but I mean, I can just tell you speaking, that may be the case. It took me 35 years to get this far. I doubt I'm going to get to Sacramento. But maybe the city council can get their attention. The one thing I can say, and we really have found this the case, our problem is somewhat unique. There's a lot of bikers in San Francisco, but they're spread out all over the place. There's some bikers that go into Mill Valley and some bikers that go to Tiburon, but the volumes we get here and the growth that we've gotten year over year is We've done some research online. We really haven't found a lot of other cities that have this concentration in this very small space. And that's a challenge for us because we love to learn from other folks and say, oh, well, gee, let's just do what those folks did. And we really haven't found that. So I think we're setting some precedence here in Sausalito. Yeah, Tom. |
| 01:20:10.03 | Tom Riley | And I'll just share a few more thoughts. Thank you for that question. We're going under the assumption that the number of bikes coming to town are going to continue to increase, as we saw from the ferry numbers, as we see the projections from the rental companies and our own experiences. It looks like about 10% to 15% each year is kind of the increase, and it's becoming a more known destination around the world. You look in guides, you look on the Internet, you know, people who do come and have a great experience are referring others. So we know we have our work cut out for us as a committee, and this is not, you know, something we solve in one year. We have many years of work to do, and hopefully others of you participate on here. But, yeah, we're working. There is, if you look at the numbers, there's continuing more bikes coming. |
| 01:20:58.31 | Ed Fotch | And just one last thing, and then we'll take the next question. Any specific ideas for making things better, either by reducing bikes or staging bikes or anything, is exactly why we have a pedestrian bike committee. Love to have you down. We don't actually need a room this big. We meet in the little room behind here, and we've never actually filled all the chairs. But, you know, so if you have ideas, specific ideas, you know, we would love to see you on Monday nights at 630. Try to get out promptly at 8 o'clock. But, you know, please, you know, we don't have the Market Corner done good ideas. Sure. |
| 01:21:30.74 | Tom Riley | Yeah. I was going to share, too. I made a comment. I'm sorry, Jonathan. Go ahead. |
| 01:21:34.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:21:34.61 | Tom Riley | Thank you. |
| 01:21:35.08 | Unknown | Now, one thing we have to remember, too, is we haven't talked much about the recreational cyclists that come through from San Francisco. That number's growing all the time as San Francisco is becoming much more a bicycle-friendly town, if you look at some of the things that they've done with the prioritized bike lanes. Sausalito is the gateway to Marin County. So everybody that wants to go to Marin County or even further comes across the Golden Gate Bridge and comes through Sausalito. There there's no alternative. So one of the things that we have to manage as a as a town is how do we make all this run as smoothly as possible? So that that comes into as a big element of this also. |
| 01:22:26.28 | Tom Riley | I was also going to share on that. It's not just bikes that are increasing, visiting pedestrians via ferry, via the buses. That's also growing. And so we are trying to represent the pedestrians and the visiting bicyclists and, of course, the residents and make this coexist as best as we can. Another question. |
| 01:22:45.82 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. |
| 01:22:47.54 | Jacques Ullman | My name is Jacques Ullman. I live at 423A Litho Street. I've lived here for over 40 years, and I think I'm going to be ending out my life here. So the big issues for me, and I think many people in Saucedo, are not ones of money or business, but of quality of life. And the two things that add to the quality of life for people here, I believe, are walking and public transportation. And so I was a bit upset to see the plans for the enlargement of the ferry terminal and see that all of a sudden space is taken away from parking lot one for bicycle staging. And I've worked on several committees over the years trying to, working on plans for downtown Sausalito. And it was always a cardinal sin to remove one parking space out of parking lot one. I mean, you could never think of doing that. And all of a sudden, |
| 01:23:41.91 | Unknown | Oh, my God. |
| 01:23:52.49 | Jacques Ullman | It's happening for bicycle staging And none of that is allocated to pedestrians. It seems to me that the priority is pedestrians and not bicycle staging. Councilman Person Pfeiffer came up with an idea some time ago of having trailers to put the bicycles on and trailing them back to San Francisco. That seems to me should be considered. It's fine. I know we can't control how many bicycles come into the town, and it's fine to have people come here, but they don't have to go back on the ferry. That's a problem. That's a problem. I've had delays coming home from San Francisco on the ferry because of the jam. People who commute by ferry have had trouble and we're residents here. So I think that that's something that can be addressed and would be legal is to not have them go back on the ferry, have them go back by some other means. And I haven't heard that discussed. I'm surprised that that wasn't picked up on. So I just want to finish with the buses, the tourist buses. Public transportation. Why don't the tourists take more public transportation? This would mean that then the Golden Gate District could have more buses, we would be better served by public transportation as residents. We could go to more places and more frequently. I feel that that should be given some serious consideration. Thank you. Up. |
| 01:25:29.93 | Jonathon Goldman | like, uh... hope i'll start with response to that shock I'm not sure... Thank you. where the impression that what the ferry district plans to do with their float, I'm not sure how the impression that that was going to result in bicycle staging in lot one came across. Because what the ferry district is proposing to do with their peer is actually to remove the staging of bicycles from lot one. And the reason that they stage in lot one now is that they have to stage somewhere, and it isn't safe for them to be mixed with cars. We as a community have made that adaptation as a temporary measure until we can figure out permanent measures to make it safe for people who choose to take the ferry back to San Francisco with bicycles they are not required to take the ferry back to San Francisco with bicycles they can ride their bicycles back they can take cabs which at this point are very frequently fitted with bike racks but they're choosing to and the ferry district is obligated to carry them if they ask to be carried. So while I think your questions and your comments are really good, and I'm sure that we have the benefit of them being archived so that this committee, as well as the city council and staff, as we go forward in the the future trying to figure out what permanent improvements we should make downtown to better and more safely accommodate the people who use that space. Your comments are absolutely important, and the process that we as a community go through to figure out how to deal with those issues will be really important and and I encourage you to to participate with that once we get to that point but the ferry district is not proposing to stage bicycles in lot one with the project that they are are trying to build now they're proposing to take those bicycles out of lot one and put them on the on the pier |
| 01:27:29.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:27:51.19 | Chief Tejada | And if I could just make a comment. I think it's our bad we didn't talk about the research into identifying staging areas. And when you look at the volume of bicycles that we have and you look for a staging area to accommodate that volume, you're looking for a very large area and you're also seeking out a large vehicle. And if you think, okay, if I can get a vehicle to carry 100 bicycles back to San Francisco, think of how many vehicles, large trucks, it would take to impact the number of bicycles in Sausalito. a lot of heavy vehicle traffic going back out of Sausalito when we have just reduced that traffic with our tour bus ordinance. So we have looked at this and sliced and diced it and every which way to see if there was an opportunity to create a staging area and to get those bicycles back to San Francisco in a vehicle, and it just – we have not come up with a solution. So if you have a solution to that, we would love to hear it. But we have looked at it, and right now we cannot see a solution. So bring it to the table because it's something we would like to continue to look at. |
| 01:27:51.26 | Jonathon Goldman | I'm not. Yeah, I'm sorry. |
| 01:29:19.56 | Ed Fotch | Great question. |
| 01:29:21.77 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:29:22.16 | Unknown | First of all, thank you for all the work you do and have been doing. I really appreciate it. I didn't know it was happening. My concern, other than what everybody's saying, the alarm around the numbers, is that we're still treating bicycles like they're in people's backyard, people playing with them. I drive down and I see bicycles doing whatever they want. Some wonderful citizens really pay attention and take care and stop in science and don't drive three in front of cars. But on the whole, they're pretty lawless. And I think this could be a legislative problem. Really, it should be on a much bigger scale than what we are able to do, but it could begin here. I really think bicycles should be licensed. People should, instead of looking very cute, all of them identical so that you can't report them anyway, bicyclesicycles should have a license plate. People should be accountable for the vehicles that they do drive. I walk the headlands a lot, and I'm really angry at the number of bicycles that just go wherever they want. They're road bikes, and they don't care. They just do it and they destroy it and they really hurt the animal life and they certainly affect mine. So I really would like to propose that. I don't know how to do this. I think it's a hopeless venture and I know that some days we'll have flying cars and bicycles and I love bicycles. They can have all the ground but right now we have to share it. So what about thinking in terms of having bicycles have licenses. There would be a lot of money. DMV for bicycles. we have to share it. So what about thinking in terms of having bicycles have licenses? There would be a lot of money, DMV for bicycles, and that would stop a hell of a lot of traffic coming here. |
| 01:30:37.09 | Unknown | Bye. Thank you. |
| 01:31:03.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:31:07.89 | Ed Fotch | So the only – first of all, I agree. I mean, I can guarantee you we're all sort of focused on quality of life, certainly all the folks on the committee. We try to sort of – and I frankly think sometimes – you know, you always remember the bikers that are the worst actors, and that doesn't always mean they're mean or bad. Sometimes they're just incompetent bikers just clogging up the sidewalks or, in my case, clogging up my driveway. And there may be that some of those things that can be fixed with the legislative process locally, which we actually now have a, you ordinance that I believe has passed about bike parking and then there's one that we've proposed about bikes on the sidewalk. I suspect, although I don't know, that licensure of bicycles is beyond the scope of us. That doesn't mean we can't advocate it, but that's going to probably be something for the city council to take up. And we'd certainly love to have you come. I mean, we do have this. We can get together and complain about bikes every first Monday of the month. It's really. In fact, we do. And sometimes you see stuff. Let me just add, and then we'll get to the next question. When I first heard about the three-foot law, there's a new law, I thought, yeah, absolutely. Those bikes should stay three feet away from my car. That's absolutely a great idea. No, because a lot of times they zing right by me. But, you know, it's sort of, so I think we're working through a lot of this stuff, like a lot of towns are. We just, as I mentioned before, seem to be so much more impacted than other people are. |
| 01:32:02.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:07.98 | Unknown | Really. |
| 01:32:39.26 | Ed Fotch | And a lot of stuff we do is probably going to be kind of on the edge because we're just experiencing stuff that other towns have not worked through. And your input, not just in this forum, but on Mondays, is helpful. Because those are really times when we try to get into the issues and figure out, you know, okay, what should we be focusing our attention on? I do think that we're going to be looking in the next couple months at this concept of staging because I know the I can tell you that the pedestrian bike committee has not looked at it, And so we'll be talking about that and we'll look forward to your input. Question. |
| 01:33:16.20 | Unknown | Good evening, Adam Krivacci. I wanted to thank you all for doing what you're doing. This is terrific. This is troubleshooting. |
| 01:33:16.61 | Unknown | I don't know. Okay. |
| 01:33:25.82 | Unknown | I am. here today to talk to you about the fact that the quality of life in this community depends also on fathers, grandfathers bicycling around with their children and grandchildren, mothers too, There was a time when we prepared a bicycle plan. There was a time when we had a bed and bike plan for the community. And tonight I did not hear a word about any reference to that plan. I didn't hear about recreational bicycling or even bicycling to the grocery store. So I would like to urge the committee that after you lay to rest your concerns about lots of bikes, unsafe free approaching Sausalito, you should go back and think about how you as fathers of a four-year-old as fathers of a four-year-old or somebody else could find less bumpy rides on the waterfront. We improved only one stretch of sidewalks where the routes kicked up the asphalt, but there are many other bikeways that are practically unrideable because the vegetation destroyed the bikeways. So I would like to ask you to think about the bicycle master plan. and a safe pedestrian plan for the South-Satel community. |
| 01:35:16.40 | Jonathon Goldman | Thanks Adam. I May have glossed over some of the Material that I presented but the city is actually in the process of updating the 2008 Bicycle and pedestrian plan now we have a consultant through Tam And I'm also well aware and completely share your your perspective on the dysfunctionality of lots of the places that both pedestrians and bicycles have access to. And we are committed, we the city are committed to identifying and prioritizing and replacing those pieces of infrastructure to the greatest extent that we have funds available to do it |
| 01:36:10.47 | Tom Riley | And may I share, thank you for that. My fellow committee members here ad nauseum for me that I do ride with my four-year-old here in town, and I'm teaching them how to ride a bike, and so I do look for places to do that and enjoy that. |
| 01:36:25.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:36:25.22 | Jim DeRiemer | Question. |
| 01:36:28.97 | Jim DeRiemer | My name is Jim DeRiemer. I've lived here just a little less than 40 years, raised a family here. Bikes are getting to be the bane of my existence, and I've seen it. increase greatly. I don't think you're going to be able to stop the bikes for hire coming in here. Okay? I think you need to find some place to put them and not close streets like Tracy without going through a little more openness about doing that before you do I'd also suggest that I like your idea of licensing bikes. I mean we get – we pay for the highways with our taxes on gas. Those guys kind of get a free ride. A license would be a way for them to start participating in making bike lanes and whatever you have. I have had an office down at Spring Street and Second, which is right kind of at the fast part of the hill as they come down the hill. Okay. And in terms of the three-foot law, I think for the people that are riding the bikes that are for rent, they need three feet, believe me. Okay. They've got people that haven't been on bikes for 30 years and their families are going to take a ride to Sausalito. And it's carnage. In front of my office, over a one-year period, there were nine accidents. Some very, very serious accidents, some not so serious, okay? Too many. Nine too many. I bet a guy that year that we were going to kill somebody. Yeah, but doesn't it? We will. I guarantee you. It's going to happen. And then we're going to say, well, what did we do about it? You've got to do it. You've got to find some way to that handle The bikes grow higher. and all the guys in spandex. My wife and I, driving home for a six month period, counted the number of bikes going through red lights or stop lights on Bridgeway. The number was 800. I don't think you've... I think we could do a lot by writing them more tickets for that group, okay? Because that's way out ahead. They don't even... They don't even intend to stop. number of them. It's not all of them, but it's a good percentage of them. If the drivers of cars did that, we'd have a huge lot of tickets, I want to thank I learned something today. that the revenue from our tickets goes to jerry brown rather than the city that bothers me a little bit but |
| 01:39:06.04 | Unknown | during Brown rather than the C-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A-R-A |
| 01:39:09.68 | Jim DeRiemer | It's another one of those mysteries of life, I guess. But I would really like to look at more police presence at those peak periods that you pointed out when the commuters are coming through, even early in the morning. I mean, it doesn't matter if somebody's in the crosswalk or not. It's a stoplight. You're supposed to stop. Thank you for your time. Thank you. |
| 01:39:38.79 | Lori Flynn | Hi, my name is Lori Flynn. I live at the north end of town, Two Swiper's Place. I'm very interested in finding out more at a different time about what's going on with Gate Six Road and that intersection that I drive by whenever I go on the freeway. I do have a bike, and I like bikes. I just don't have a lot of time to ride mine right now, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to do that more in the future. So I have a couple of thoughts. One is I commute to San Francisco on Golden Gate Transit, and whenever I come home down Alexander Avenue and see those people that have rented bikes going on the part where it's really skinny, where the houses start, I'm so afraid that something really awful is going to happen. I know this has been brought up, but the plan through Fort Bakerersound is great if people leave their bikes there and then shuttle into town or take a Golden Gate Transit or whatever. But that's going to be at least two years off and I'm really concerned about these families that you see. Where the road is wider, there's a side part. When you first leave the bridge, that's fine. People usually, if they have any common sense, can go down that. But it gets really narrow. It's really scary. Plus, you've got a bus of 30 people that are going five miles an hour when people are trying to get home to go to appointments and things because they're tourists in the middle of |
| 01:40:20.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:40:59.02 | Lori Flynn | There's the danger and then there's also the inconvenience for a lot of people that are trying to do a good thing and take public transportation. And it would be nice if there were more buses. Whoever said that, I like that idea. One thing... Please don't take any more of our parking away. There are some people that love to ride bikes. Some people ride them all the time. Other people can't ride bikes, or maybe they don't want to, or they're unable to ride bikes and they need to be able to park. And I see... Well, I work in San Francisco, I read the Chronicle, And I keep up with what's going on there. And I kind of feel like San Francisco is, everything's going to the, not the dogs, but the bikes. And I feel like we're kind of moving that way here too. and I really want to be able to drive when I need to drive and park downtown. |
| 01:41:41.46 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:41:41.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:41:41.59 | Unknown | . |
| 01:41:44.27 | Lori Flynn | Because that's the third thing. I was talking with someone at work the other day. She didn't know I lived in Sausalito. And she said, I used to go to Sausalito. I really like Sausalito on a pretty day, but I don't go there anymore because of all the bikes and all the traffic. So there is an element of people that don't come that used to come, and they might very well go to some of the stores where you spend more than $30. So that's something to kind of keep in mind, that some people are being kept away because of all this. Thank you. |
| 01:42:14.48 | Ed Fotch | Great. Thanks. Just one comment that – so the narrow sidewalk – excuse me, on the south end of town. In fact, if you actually walk, there's a section – there actually isn't a sidewalk. It's sort of a glorified curb. And one of my neighbors – and so there's been some studies of widening Alexander Avenue. And I think if I live here 1,000 years, maybe I will actually see that happening. But the problem, as you probably know, is a nice gray house – happens to be for sale right now. It's actually the house itself. is sitting in the street right of way. And since it's for sale, the city could buy it and tear down that part of the house and widen Alexander, but let's assume that's not gonna happen. So my point is we're very aware of that. We spent a lot of time focused on there and that's why we- |
| 01:42:55.98 | Unknown | I'm sure you have, yes. |
| 01:42:57.33 | Ed Fotch | Yeah, well, it's easy for me. I just walk out my door, as some of the other folks who live on our end of town. But that's really why we focused on the walk your bikes on the sidewalk there. It's a tough enforcement thing, but it's not only a narrow sidewalk, but it's sort of a |
| 01:43:14.96 | Lori Flynn | One other thing I was just thinking of tonight when someone was talking about people just want to go over the Golden Gate Bridge. Is there any way we can just have them go over the Golden Gate Bridge, put their bikes on a bus and take them back to San Francisco? Just a thought. I don't know where you'd stage it, but. |
| 01:43:20.21 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. |
| 01:43:20.36 | Unknown | anything. |
| 01:43:30.11 | Lori Flynn | Maybe they don't really want to come to Sausalito. THANK YOU. |
| 01:43:35.23 | Ed Fotch | So we have three more questions? Four more questions? Yes, ma'am. |
| 01:43:42.87 | Bonnie Johnson | Hi, Bonnie Johnson, 210 2nd Street, right in the impact zone, and they're in my driveway too. First question is for Captain Rohrabacher. Have you gotten any further on the length of buses coming into the town and the pollution? We talked about when I last talked to you. We talked about natural gas. And we talked about the length, that if they were shorter, it would be easier coming down second and Alexander. I'd like an answer about that. And then, Mr. Goldman, please put a stop sign from right there. from Golden Gate Market on 2nd Street just across. This was brought up years and years ago, a group of People living there wanted it desperately because we were waiting for somebody to get hit. Now with the bicycles coming down 2nd Street, they're all stopping on the corner, blocking the whole corner. and getting a sandwich. and coming back and blocking the whole sidewalk. with their bicycles. So that would be wonderful to have a walkway there and all of the residents that live there, that would be wonderful. Okay, thank you. |
| 01:44:58.57 | John Rohrabacher | So the answer to your first couple of comments and your questions, Both of the topics of the length of the buses that are allowed to come into town and also whether they are adhering to pollution standard rules are clearly both outside of the governance of Sausalito. But just to go back on that point again is that I learned this in the research part of our job about tour buses, is that they all have compliance deadlines for anti-pollution, especially for the diesel buses, the ones that make all the black smoke. Not really, you know, all that conversant in the mechanical terms, but they have different things that they're supposed to do. The California Air Resources Board oversees that and has set those deadlines, and each of the companies has to adhere to them. They're inspected to make sure that they do. I know of one company, and I wish I could remember the name right now, but I can't, that actually changed their buses over to natural gas. Thank you. in order to save a little money over the cost of replacing the diesel engines because it was so costly. There might have been some other benefits to them as well to do that. So I know it's on their radar screen of things that's important to them. I don't know that we'll see those changes all at once or very quickly, but between what the state is doing to require those vehicles to have clean air emissions and such is all scheduled out. then the issue about the length of the buses is a little bit interesting about how many different rules and state agencies that have to do with that. But we, the City of Sausalito, have no way of limiting the length of the buses that come into town. Like, for instance, the biggest ones are 45-footers, and And it has to do with things more complicated that I'm able to actually answer properly for you. But I know that there's – it has to do with the fees that they pay and the way that Caltrans designates the highway and the surface streets that attach to the highways. Actually, that kind of exhausts my knowledge about it. |
| 01:47:21.35 | Bonnie Johnson | Mm-hmm. We were just talking about safety, and that is definitely part of safety because it is so narrow up there. Of course. And the pollution issue was – you remember all the people that were here talking about that. I do. I remember the person that came here. |
| 01:47:27.40 | John Rohrabacher | Of course. |
| 01:47:31.66 | John Rohrabacher | I do. You're talking about that. I remember the person who came with the dirty air screens. Yeah. I know. Very good visual aid. |
| 01:47:36.29 | Bonnie Johnson | I know. Very good visual aid. Two doors down from me. Absolutely. I do want to say something positive. It is better. It is better. The bicyclists are... |
| 01:47:38.92 | John Rohrabacher | Absolutely. It is better. All right. |
| 01:47:42.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:45.60 | Bonnie Johnson | Well, with this three-foot deal, they're getting out of control all over the road. The buses are better. It is better. It's better. Okay. Thank you. |
| 01:47:54.75 | John Rohrabacher | We'd like the improvement. And |
| 01:47:56.76 | Jonathon Goldman | And just very briefly in answer to your question about the second and Richardson intersection dr. Fox alluded to some of the studies that that the city has done in the past we were actually successful in getting a grant from the one Bay Area grant program through transportation authority of Marin to look at what kind of improvements we could make within the right-of-way from the South City limits all the way to Richardson and that A is working on all of those issues and when when they have identified alternatives we'll be bringing those alternatives to the City Council and to the community for your input on on what they suggest and then to the extent that we can develop some consensus on a project or on the improvements that do make sense, we're in a much better position to compete for grant funds to try and construct some of those improvements. |
| 01:48:00.18 | Bonnie Johnson | Thank you. |
| 01:48:00.23 | John Rohrabacher | you |
| 01:48:58.37 | Unknown | Yes, sir. Hi, my name is David Sudo. I am, I've been a resident for 10 years. I am a bicycle commuter. I commute through San Francisco to Oakland every day, either by biking over the bridge or taking the ferry, both of which are very nice things to do. And, you know, I have, you know, a couple of comments. And I also drive through the city, and I also do a fair amount of walking around town, so I have a wide perspective. I agree with most everybody about the safety. I'm very concerned about the safety of the tourists. They do very unpredictable things all the time. The recreational riders from San Francisco, it seems to be a cultural issue, and I believe that ticketing would help. They do get the message when we ramp up ticketing to pay more attention to the traffic laws. You know, but they don't know what the rules are. They don't know the laws. They, when you tell them, they either ignore you or they're surprised that there are actually rules that they have to follow. So I think some education would be highly encouraged. But I also want to encourage bicycling in town. There's very few businesses that have adequate bicycle parking. You know, Chibo and Poggio are two that come to mind. Most other places don't have any convenient bicycle areas. If you want to take your bicycle to Starbucks now with the new rules, you could very likely be in violation of the bicycle parking laws if you want to take your bike down to Starbucks to grab a cup of coffee in the morning because there's only one, two bicycle spots there right now. I'm going to go we're talking about, Gate 6, I was wondering if there's any work being done with improving signage or access to Marin City from Sausalito. Right now, you don't know what you do. Most people, I think, take the sidewalk as a multi-use path, but there's no real direction there. and both have safety issues, I guess. |
| 01:51:14.78 | Jonathon Goldman | I can certainly try and address some of those. First of all, thank you for those comments. I'll start with Gate 6. The improvements in the signage that we have envisioned, even though Marin County is involved in the process, have not really addressed wayfinding for Marin City. And at this point, the expectation is that either bicyclists are comfortable riding with traffic on Bridge Boulevard and going under the under crossing or coming that way or that they are on the sidewalk as a multi-use path. I think it's a good suggestion to look at and I think what I should do is reach out to Jonathan Logan and Marin Community Services District and see if we can't develop some signage improvements as part of that project. Alicia O'Loughlin from Renn County Bike Coalition very graciously, the bike coalition and Alicia specifically very graciously helped us get a grant of a number of additional U-shaped bike racks that as soon as they're delivered, we'll be installing in public right-of-way where there was space and where business owners expressed interest in having official bike parking. And to the extent that private business owners have space and want to install racks of their own, there are other places in town, although I certainly could see how Starbucks would be a problem, and there are other places in town where there just isn't room for a rack to accommodate any significant numbers of bikes. if you or anybody has suggestions about places where a public bike rack would be valuable, by all means, let me know. I don't know how long this South Salud Forum email address will be viable, but that'll work, or my email address is available on the website, and I'd be happy to work with you on that. |
| 01:52:44.53 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:53:10.53 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:53:23.42 | Jonathon Goldman | Great. A couple more questions. |
| 01:53:24.94 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. |
| 01:53:27.78 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:53:27.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:53:28.49 | Unknown | I want to thank you all. I was very impressed with the work that's been done, very enthusiastic about some of the solutions that are still in the works. I have, however, a really tremendous concern in terms of the safety issue for the spandex group, the road warrior-type bicyclists that blow through town and do not stop at crosswalks or at red lights ever. And there are some that never do. And it's the law that they must. And it's... You know, I worked in San Francisco for many years and lived here. And in San Francisco, I know that bike usage has gone up 71% in the last year or so. And they've had three now, I think it's four, pedestrian deaths from accidents with bicycles, where bicyclists ran into pedestrians. in El Suido, just the other day, a 92-year-old woman was killed by a bicyclist who hit her. My own nephew lost his leg in another town because he was hit by a a bicyclist and it had to be amputated. So I'm very aware of the danger of bicycles. I've had to jump out of the way of bicycles. I sometimes use a cane and I'm slow crossing the street. I've had bicycles completely ignore the fact that I was in the middle of the crosswalk, crossing with the white pedestrian walk sign. This is really – I know that we have a resource issue here. We got the two motorcycles recently that maybe one of the uses they could be put to would be to stop bicyclists at red lights or chase ones that don't stop there. In San Francisco, there were, while I was working with the Human Service Agency, there were a number of meetings with the MTA planning the bicycle plans in San Francisco before they built the new lanes and so forth. And the two I participated in was one for seniors and one for people with disabilities. And one of the primary issues there was licensing. A number of people who had lived in Europe talked about how licensing was very well received there and worked very well. And it really made a big difference in enforcement. Maybe we can't bring about licensing. We can make an effort. I would certainly advocate for it on the state level myself. But I think that we need to even consider such things as, stopping and identifying bicyclists that go through red lights, that illegally cross crosswalks, and even consider a penalty, a monetary penalty. It is a law. And if we can't get identification from them or payment on the spot, then we might even consider confiscating their bike until they can come in to the police department. Excuse me, chief. But come in and pay their penalty fine and pick up their bike. I mean, I know that's really, you know, getting very... serious about the issue, but I'm serious about the loss of life and loss of limb that can happen And we have very crowded sidewalks. We have people walking in the streets at the corner of Princess and Bridgeway. If you are using a cane or a walker or even just can't step down the very steep curb there, which is an issue. I've seen people have a problem with that. You have to step into Bridgeway in the curb cut in order to cross Princess Street. This is one of the most crowded intersections in our town, as everybody knows. And cars and these fast-moving bicycles come racing along there, and if they have a green light, they're in the right of way. but they're not looking, and I've seen people have to dodge a car. because they had to go down the curb cut. So, I mean, there's issues here. but I'm sort of going off in a different direction, but I think it's really, really urgent that we look at the issue of the law, traffic law being followed by these fast-moving bicycles. That I see is the big unaddressed issue here. Everything else is really being worked on very beautifully, and maybe there's solutions for that, too, that I don't know about. But I just wanted to express my concern in that area. Thank you. |
| 01:58:56.81 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. So the one thing I would mention is that this was a topic that came up early in the bike committee, and we had some specific requests from the city. I did see the motorcycle folks and their fancy new motorcycles, the police, that is, were down there. I know they gave out some tickets. It seemed like things got... a little bit better. The only good news I would say is that based on our statistics, there's a window period of time when most of the recreational riders go through. So it's not like you have to – we don't have the resources to have a police officer there all the time. But so, you know, we certainly share your concern at the committee level. |
| 01:59:32.19 | Chief Tejada | may answer to that just because I get a sense that maybe the police are not doing anything. I do have limited resources. This time last year, my staffing was down 40% for a variety of reasons. This year, we were fortunate that we were at full staffing for most of the summer, and our citations of cyclists tripled compared to last year. So we are out there. The officers, you know, I might have two officers on duty a day. And if you think about all of the things that are going on in the city, I don't have an officer to devote to traffic. I wish I did. When they are here on the motorcycles, they pay more attention to traffic because on a motorcycle, it's easier for an officer to catch up with a cyclist than in a big police car. So we do utilize those motorcycles. We're so grateful that we have them and our citations are three times what they were this time last year. So we are working on it. What I would love to have, what I would love to have is a volunteer group on weekend mornings standing out there with signs saying, slow down, stop for the light, just with a sign, just a visual to say, this is not appropriate, this is unsafe. So if anybody in the audience, anybody listening or watching would like to join that volunteer group, please contact me. I would love to have your cooperation out there. |
| 01:59:32.51 | Ed Fotch | Yes, please. |
| 02:00:56.59 | Ed Fotch | And that could be as part of the envisioned charge of those bike ambassadors that we had talked about. |
| 02:01:01.19 | Julie Warren | Yes. |
| 02:01:03.49 | Ed Fotch | Yes, ma'am. |
| 02:01:04.09 | Julie Warren | Yes, Julie Warren, 1707 Bridgeway, Sausalito. Chief Tejada, I love your idea. I can't see myself doing it, because I would probably carny it up. And that would not be the right answer. But anyway, you guys are doing a great job. The thing that I wanted to bring up, I talked to you guys about some things earlier, is everything is going wonderfully, but your timeframe, I think, needs to speed up. As I said, I spent some time in Europe this summer, and it didn't matter which country you were in or what part of it, there seemed to be an understanding about what a bike lane was for, and pedestrian walkways as opposed to bicycle lanes and car lanes. and they were respected. And there was elegant parking solutions in the tourist areas for bicycles as well as cars. And they managed to make it work. And that's something I'd like to see more of, because I think we can do that, and if we have to be the leader of the way in Sausalito, then let's do it, because if we can find an elegant solution, everybody else will chip in. And the city has it more in the face than we do. But. you know, we take it from around the world. They just take it from their own people and commuters. Our children need special rules too. I can't see licensing eight-year-olds. That's not gonna work. at least not from my perspective. But. That's you guys' charge. Mine is just to help the cyclists when they're downtown. as well as to hope that, you know, it'll be safe for me to ride my bike when I choose to ride it. in the bike lane, no longer on the sidewalk, or where I know how to ride, you know, where nobody else does. But anyway, because I don't ride on Bridgeway, I think that's a waste of my time. But anyway, good also for concierges and hotels and the folks you know, around who would like good bike maps, if there could be one put together THAT SHOWS THE ROUTE FOR THE CYCLIST AND WHERE TO PARK IN EACH COMMUNITY I'm not sure. crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. And if they can't just ride off the Golden Gate Bridge into Fort Baker, a way to carry their bike down those stairs to access Fort Baker. So it's easier to commute. I mean, granted, a Sausalito 12-year-old adores riding down Alexander Avenue. And 40 years ago when I was doing it, it was more than the thing to do. But now... I wouldn't have a 12-year-old go down that road. I just wouldn't. But anyway... The world is changing and we have to change with it, and yes, there's going to be more So let's make room for them and find an elegant way to do it. And thank you. |
| 02:04:15.54 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. |
| 02:04:15.56 | Unknown | Thank you. Final question. No statements. A series of questions I'd like to chat on through you, Dr. Fatsh-Fabey. Do you have an estimate, an accurate estimate, a semi-accurate estimate on the total number of bikes coming to Sorcelino each year, broken up by rental, recreation, and commuto? |
| 02:04:18.34 | Julie Warren | Sure. |
| 02:04:24.33 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:04:24.65 | Jacques Ullman | So, |
| 02:04:33.12 | Unknown | Question one. Question two, how many tourist coaches are coming in, and is there a total passenger count? Annual. Um, Question three, is PBAC looking at, I didn't see improved signage very much in the presentation. The current signage at the entrance at Alexander It's pretty lousy, it's nonexistent, it's not multilingual. You don't blame the tourists because they can't read the signs and they're buried. So are you looking at increased and enhanced signage? And also is PBAC looking at more aggressive policing? I know that involves more money. So are there budgetary issues in terms of putting more police feet on the street? And question five, is there actually an ordinance that prevents riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. If not, is there some policing that can take place for that? I noticed there are certainly the green advisory signs that say, walk your bike. But I'd like to know if there's an actual ordinance, because I'm getting 15 different opinions on that. So if I could get responses to those. Sorry to give you a five-part question, but there it is. |
| 02:05:46.68 | Ed Fotch | Thanks. So taking those, as I wrote them down, in order, we are focused on pedestrians and bikes and not on buses, so I can't really answer much about buses except to say they all go by my house. and they're not as noisy as they used to be. And I don't know if there is an answer to the bus question, |
| 02:06:08.28 | Unknown | Nobody knows how many tourist coaches are coming to town. I mean, I can't believe that. |
| 02:06:14.21 | John Rohrabacher | No, we've not counted passengers on buses. Well, what about buses? |
| 02:06:17.92 | Unknown | What about buses themselves? Total number of coaches, individual coaches coming to town. |
| 02:06:21.60 | John Rohrabacher | You know, we did. And like, for instance, on one sampling over the summer, we had between three different companies only, we had 48 round trips, which is why we started that process of moving those buses northbound rather than going back southbound. And then that didn't count. Those were the three largest companies making the most frequent trips. And then after that, the other ones were far less frequent. So we were using that as our starting point information, but we never actually count passengers. |
| 02:06:56.24 | Unknown | So is there any extrapolation on bus traffic coming to town, tourist bus traffic? Did anybody extrapolate the numbers and say there are 220,000 people coming in on tourist coaches to Sausalito annually? There's no number that exists. Okay. |
| 02:07:09.32 | John Rohrabacher | Thank you. |
| 02:07:09.42 | Ed Fotch | Bye. |
| 02:07:09.54 | John Rohrabacher | you |
| 02:07:12.97 | Unknown | What about bicycles, Dr. Fos? |
| 02:07:14.80 | Ed Fotch | So on the bikes, there was no estimates when we convened. So we've taken a few shots at it, and here's the data. And the end of the story is it looks like about a half million bikes a year. And so let me tell you how we sort of have backed into that, at least as a committee. So we know that a majority of the rental park, first of all, we know there's roughly the same number of tourist bikes that come in as recreational bikes, although in the middle of the summer there's more rental bikes But the recreational riders tend to ride year round and, of course, the commuters tend to, you know, aside from the really inclement weather. So it looks as though it's half million and so we got some data from the Golden Gate Ferry. But they're not the only ferry in town. And when you put it all together, it looks like order of magnitude, you know, like a quarter million rental bikes and a quarter million combination commuter. The rest. Rough, but it's, you know, certainly not off by a factor of 10, and I suspect that's within, you know, maybe 20%. The other thing that we'd really like, of course, is historical data so we can really plot this stuff. |
| 02:08:09.90 | Unknown | the rationale. |
| 02:08:22.94 | Ed Fotch | And we don't have that, but we have little slices of it. So you see what the Golden Gate Ferry moved in bikes three years ago, and I think got even more serious about measurements two years ago. I don't know if you notice when you go on, they're clicking away from the bikes. So those are the estimates that we have. On the police, it was one of our first resolutions was a suggestion. After we got the data and the time, we sort of said, you don't need to have enforcement increase you know, 24 by 7, there's really window periods of time when the recreational riders, you know, blow through town, and a lot of them don't seem to stop at the stop signs, acknowledge the crosswalks. I actually am more concerned about the crosswalks than I am about the stop signs, frankly, because there's a number of crosswalks, and, you know, pedestrians don't do particularly well. But it's certainly been a priority from the standpoint of the committee, and you heard Chief Tata would like to have, you know, more enforcement. But I actually agree. |
| 02:09:07.36 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:09:21.89 | Ed Fotch | that if we can get this ambassador program going, I think if there's a sense that when people come into town, it isn't the Wild West and there actually are people that are, you know, there and that there is a rule. I'll get to sidewalks in a minute. I think that that can have an impact. I think that they know they're not out on some county road. From the standpoint of the sidewalks, frankly, we were a little bit surprised. I'm not sure why, but we were that there was no ordinance and that bikes were free to ride on the sidewalks. And as of today, they still are. Our recommendation from the pedestrian bike committee to the city council was that at least starting on the south end of town, that the bikes can be on the sidewalk, but they'd be walked. because there's just not enough. There's a couple things. Thank you. |
| 02:10:04.73 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:10:05.11 | Ed Fotch | And there's too many houses where the distance from the front door to the sidewalk is, you know, measured in a number of feet. You can count on one hand. And so at least in those areas, it didn't seem unreasonable to have the bikers walk if they need to be on the sidewalk. And, frankly, it's for their safety as well. But that's not mandated, correct? Our suggestion is that becomes an ordinance. Okay. Thank you. So it would be an enforceable ordinance with signage. Now, again, we serve at the pleasure of the city council and there's staff issues and they have to make sure it's legal and all that, so there's a legislative process in town. But we have pretty much wrestled that one to the ground. Tom did a great job of saying, yeah, but, you know, there's four-year-olds that, you know, we have to accommodate them. So we've done our work on that, and it's now been sort of put to the council and the staff to work through the legislative process. |
| 02:10:21.04 | Unknown | but that's not mandated corrected they go Okay. |
| 02:10:53.94 | Unknown | Point of clarification, though, am I hearing you right in saying that They can ride their bike on the sidewalk in the narrowest part of town, and there's no police enforcement. that we can impose currently. Yeah, currently because there's no law in the books. There's no law in the books. Okay. Okay. |
| 02:11:08.12 | Ed Fotch | Yeah. |
| 02:11:08.29 | Unknown | Of course. |
| 02:11:10.45 | Unknown | Thank you. I had a, the other question was more aggressive policing, budgetary issues, and then signage. |
| 02:11:12.35 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:11:19.93 | Ed Fotch | Yeah, and so the police, that was, again, that was one of our recommendations, get more aggressive. I think, you know, for those of us who ride, we know other people who ride. Alicia's here. She's actually a non-voting member. I think the word gets out that, you know, you should be stopping when you go through Sausalito or you're probably going to get a ticket. Sadly, we won't get most of the revenue, but I don't think this is about revenue generation. It's about safety. So we made that recommendation. As I said, I do think that when someone comes walking and stepping out in front of you with some semi-official looking outfit. We're not going to train people to tackle the bikers or as one lady who came to one of our meetings said, just throw one of them under the bus, literally, and the word will get out. You know, we're not going that option either. But we do think that the ambassadors can have some authority just to direct folks and then during the peak volumes, which is really two and a half hours typically on Saturday and Sunday mornings where you get the real volumes. that we could see some more enforcement. And that, again, has been our recommendation. And there was only one slide that addressed signage. It's a great issue. It was one that we talked about early. In fact, I went from the San Francisco side to the San Francisco In the South, they were taking a picture of every sign that seemed like it was posted to bikes, and there's five different types of signs. Some of them are pointing in a direction. |
| 02:12:37.44 | Unknown | Some of them are buried. |
| 02:12:39.06 | Ed Fotch | Yeah. So there's actually an effort that's funded, I believe, by the county to try to coordinate signage. And there's a meeting coming up, I believe, actually in the next week, tomorrow, which is in the next week. And it's focused on this issue. So one of the challenges from the bike community is we can recommend this, but a lot of the signage has to occur in the park or on the bridge. |
| 02:13:06.02 | Unknown | But we could do the city, though. At the city line, there's no signage at the city line. The first signage are the series of walk your bikes that people don't look up. They're well above eye level. |
| 02:13:14.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:15.03 | Ed Fotch | There is a lot of people that are not going to be able to do that. |
| 02:13:17.97 | Unknown | There's no city signage that I'm aware of until you get down to Bridgeway Waterfront, |
| 02:13:24.05 | Ed Fotch | Yeah, and I think that that can be improved, although frankly, I mean, if we put up a bunch of signs, there are gonna be people saying, wow, you turn our quality of life, you know, There's too many signs. And then the other question is, what does the sign say? because if you currently can ride on the sidewalk, you can't have a sign that says no riding on the sidewalk or please walk your bike. So we think that will be an important message. My understanding on the height of the signs actually, because I think that came up, is that that's mandated because they don't want some tall person riding a bike getting whacked when they go by, so I guess it has to be above a certain, at least that's our understanding from the, again, you can tell some of these things have been brought up. We've discussed them at the committee. Sometimes we don't like the answers we get. But we're dedicated to lighting a candle rather than just cursing the darkness. |
| 02:14:12.85 | Unknown | My question was not actually for specifics. The question was, is the committee going to recommend, in its recommendations, increased and better signage as an educational tool for these half a million people who were coming in. |
| 02:14:26.30 | Ed Fotch | Yeah, so the answer is yes. |
| 02:14:27.18 | Unknown | In multiple languages, I might add. |
| 02:14:29.59 | Ed Fotch | and in collaboration with other agencies, yes. |
| 02:14:31.90 | Unknown | Okay, thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:14:32.95 | Ed Fotch | Appreciate it. So that's the end of our questions. And let me just say that this is fun stuff. And now I see why the council meetings go so late. You can't see it. They got candy up here. I'm surprised you guys ever finish a council meeting before midnight. |
| 02:14:45.70 | Unknown | See you. |
| 02:14:51.10 | Ed Fotch | I really appreciate everyone who viewed this, everyone who came in, all of our speakers, absolutely. And, you know, everyone has, you know, busy lives, and we appreciate it. We really are, as you can tell, looking at lots of tradeoffs. can't as a committee make the perfect the enemy of the good, we'd never get anywhere, particularly when you have a citizenry that can't even define what the perfect is. Some people want more bikes, some people want fewer bikes, but I think nobody wants congested streets, congested, unsafe sidewalks. And so we're, you know, picking away at these issues to make them better. And we would love to have your input. And if you have any interest in being one of those authoritative people that can step out in front of those people who don't stop with a very snappy vest, which we could use funding for. Please send an email. out in front of those people who don't stop with a very snappy vest, which we could use funding for. Please send an email to the ambassadors, related to the ambassadors program, so I'll leave the forum at gmail.com. And with that, thank you very much. Hope you have a great night. |
| 02:15:54.65 | Jacques Ullman | Excellent job, Chairman. I think your price is good. |
Jacques Ullman — Against: Concerned about quality of life, opposed to using parking lot space for bike staging, suggested alternatives like bike trailers back to San Francisco, and advocated for more public transportation use by tourists. ▶ 📄
Unnamed Speaker — Against: Proposed licensing bicycles with license plates to hold riders accountable, citing lawless behavior and safety concerns, especially on shared paths. ▶ 📄
Adam Krivacci — Neutral: Urged the committee to focus on recreational and family biking within Sausalito, improving bike paths and sidewalks for residents, referencing the need to revisit the bicycle master plan. ▶ 📄
Jim DeRiemer — Against: Highlighted safety issues with rental bikes and recreational cyclists running red lights, advocated for bike licensing to fund infrastructure, and called for more police enforcement during peak times. ▶ 📄
Lori Flynn — Against: Expressed fear about safety on narrow parts of Alexander Avenue, opposed to losing parking spaces, noted that some visitors avoid Sausalito due to bikes, and suggested shuttling bikes back to San Francisco. ▶ 📄
Bonnie Johnson — Neutral: Asked about bus length and pollution standards, requested a stop sign near Golden Gate Market for pedestrian safety, and acknowledged improvements but raised ongoing concerns. ▶ 📄
David Sudo — In Favor: Supported bicycling in town, emphasized need for better bike parking and education for recreational cyclists, and suggested improved signage for Marin City access. ▶ 📄
Unnamed Speaker — Against: Raised serious safety concerns about fast-moving cyclists ignoring traffic laws, suggested aggressive enforcement including bike confiscation, and advocated for bicycle licensing. ▶ 📄
Julie Warren — Neutral: Encouraged faster implementation of solutions, cited European models for bike lanes and parking, and suggested better bike maps and access to Fort Baker. ▶ 📄
Unnamed Speaker — Neutral: Asked for data on bike and bus counts, inquired about improved signage, aggressive policing, and the existence of an ordinance against riding bikes on sidewalks. ▶ 📄