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Health & Fitness

Call for a "Fresh Start"

Community consensus strongly urges Larkspur’s City Council to bring an immediate end to the wildly unpopular mega-development proposals for Larkspur Landing and make a fresh start on studying ideas to improve traffic, parking, and bike/pedestrian safety in the Larkspur Landing area. 

The near-unanimous call by the huge crowd at Larkspur’s May 22 public hearing was for the City Council to spurn the mega development concept central to the Larkspur Landing Station Area Plan and reject, as grossly deficient, the accompanying Draft Environmental Impact Review (DEIR).  This would result, de facto, in “No Project” (one of the four options offered in the SAP and DEIR documents).   Most Larkspur officials now say they too support “No Project.”  There is no good reason to string this out.  Constituents are demanding that Larkspur’s leaders “Stop it NOW!” with an immediate “no thank you” vote on both SAP and the DEIR.  Once both the SAP and DEIR are set aside once and for all, Larkspur can make a “Fresh Start,” to properly study ideas for improving traffic, pedestrian and bike safety, and access to a possible future Larkspur SMART Station (the building of which is not yet a sure thing).  This is the fastest, most cost effective and responsible path to take, and restores community trust in its elected leaders. 

Besides “Stop it NOW!” constituents should urge a fresh start approach to studying improvements to the Larkspur Landing area’s traffic congestion, parking, and safety for pedestrians and cyclists.   The SAP is not the right vehicle for doing that as its ideas for traffic, parking, pedestrian safety and bike paths offer little that’s new; present no bona fide studies; and are designed to accommodate an aggressive development scheme.  A fresh start affords Larkspur the opportunity to develop a thoughtful, well researched plan, without any development, that has the potential to garner widespread community support. 

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It’s difficult to walk away from an endeavor that consumed more than $600,000 in taxpayer money  -- even if that came via regional agencies -- and took up an enormous amount of the city’s and the public’s time and energy.  It takes courage for our local politicians to say “No thanks” to those regional agencies that funded the SAP and DEIR as part of their pro-development planning scheme.  But the SAP and the DEIR are both so defective that keeping them alive for a more extended review requires wasting a huge additional amount of taxpayer time and money in a process doomed to fail.  

The right way to evaluate proposals for traffic relief at the already-snarled Larkspur Landing/Sir Francis Drake/101 is through a de novo, fresh start, process that carefully studies and evaluates options, which the DEIR did not do; it simply presented a list of possible measures.  In fact, the most potentially significant traffic relief idea currently being floated – a new, direct 101/580 connection in San Rafael – isn’t even mentioned in the SAP and DEIR, which is just as well because that’s the turf of San Rafael and Caltrans and other agencies. 

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Parking solutions also merit a fresh start.  The SAP document proposes an approach – transportation demand management pricing -- that’s sure to generate universal outrage by consumers and business owners alike.  SAP’s only proposed solution is to charge for all on- and off-street parking within the greater Larkspur Landing area.  A new unelected agency, insulated from voter fury, would set high parking fees -- high enough to ensure 15% of all spaces would always be vacant.  The result: many ferry commuters would drive to San Francisco, increasing traffic and pollution while harming Larkspur Landings’ businesses.

A “fresh start” approach could also develop new ideas that more significantly benefit motorists, commuters, pedestrians and cyclists.  The SAP actually offers them little that isn’t already in place or in progress, so we don’t need to adopt the SAP to gain those benefits.  With the exception of much-needed improvements to cross-walks (something that doesn’t require either the SAP or an EIR), most of the SAP’s new proposals profiting cyclists and pedestrians relate to filling in a few gaps in the sidewalk network and widening some bike paths.  Citizen input into a ”fresh start” approach could well generate a more extensive and beneficial pedestrian and cyclist wish list to pursue.

What a ”fresh start” really offers is the opportunity to develop a thoughtful, well researched plan, without any development, that has the potential to garner widespread community support.  This would be a bona fide, thorough study – of prospective improvements to traffic, parking, bicycle routes, and pedestrian safety – that carefully analyzes the likely outcomes and avoids unintended consequences.   We need to know, for example, whether “solutions” thought to improve circulation over the Richmond Bridge and on Sir Francis Drake would actually make things worse, sucking more traffic into Marin, aggravating air quality, paralyzing traffic on 101, and further endangering pedestrians and cyclists traveling alongside more crowded thoroughfares. 

Importantly, a ”fresh start” approach eliminates for good the very real possibility that SAP and its DEIR can potentially open the door to future development at Larkspur Landing without any further environmental impact review.

To ensure a bright future for Larkspur and Marin, “No Project” is the only responsible option.  There’s no reason to string this out.  Larkspur City Council should “Stop it Now!” with an immediate “No thank you” vote on the SAP and the DEIR.  The next, positive, step is to embrace a “Fresh Start.”  It’s just common sense.

 

Written by: Mimi Willard 

Endorsed by: Susan Andrus & Joe Keene





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