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Health & Fitness

Circulation Scheme or Circulation Scam?

A small minority with questionable motives now promotes the specious idea that Larkspur’s highly unpopular Larkspur Landing Station Area Plan and the associated Draft Environmental Impact Report can be “rescued” – dressed up (or more accurately, masqueraded) as a means to improve traffic along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard near 101 and I580.   This “hail Mary pass”, meant to rescue both the LL SAP and its elected proponents, is based on two falsehoods: (1) that the DEIR is an a la carte menu permitting backers to fish out the exceedingly small number of appealing ingredients from a wholly unsavory stew and (2) that the DEIR contained adequate studies of the significant environmental and traffic congestion impacts of proposed changes to traffic lanes and configurations.

I leave it to legal experts to debunk the first of the above two fallacies, which I am confident they will do shortly and definitively.

However, regarding adequate study or analysis of prospective changes to traffic lanes and configurations presented in the DEIR, the answer is simple: there are none. 

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The DEIR (p 125-6) simply itemizes ideas currently being studied under the auspices of the Transportation Authority of Marin, noting that those results are not expected until 2015 or 2016.  What's in the DEIR's circulation element are not “plans” or “mitigation measures;” they are just possible policy ideas.  Neither the Plan nor the DEIR actually lays out what those specific improvements would be, nor do they analyze or study the potential significant impacts of those improvements.  It’s irresponsible to propose, and ludicrous to imagine, that Larkspur’s elected officials can approve the Larkspur Landing Station Area Plan Environment Impact Report under the erroneous premise that a circulation plan has been sufficiently studied – and heaven help us - leave the door open (intentionally or not) for that EIR to be certified and then later used as a fast-track pathway to mega development at Larkspur Landing.

Here’s more to consider: 

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Per the DEIR (p. 113), “Larkspur’s current general plan acknowledges that the intersections of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard with Eliseo Drive and Bon Air Drive currently operates at LOS E or F” [i.e., level of service gets a failing grade].   However, it also notes that capacity improvements to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard would not be desirable for the community due to upstream and downstream bottlenecks and potential impacts to the Larkspur quality of life.”  The DEIR’s right hand and the left hand are apparently not acquainted, at least in the circulation element, which lays out as its primary objective “Goal 1: Regard quality of life in Larkspur as more important than mobility of traffic” (p 120). 

With the DEIR proclaiming both the paramount importance of quality of life (over traffic mobility) and the potential of capacity “improvements” to worsen quality of life, I’d say the DEIR and its proponents have some explaining to do.

The bottom line is that the DEIR’s analysis is too inadequate to even allow the City to cherry-pick the parts they might want to “rescue” – which makes one wonder why they would consider doing so.  We urge Larkspur officials to keep in mind their stated main objective of preserving quality of life in considering not only the circulation element but the entirety of the FUBAR Larkspur Landing SAP scheme.

We can only hope that Larkspur City officials will apply some common sense, before it’s too late, and respond to SAP and the DEIR by saying, thank you, it was an interesting exercise but it’s not the direction we think Larkspur needs to go, and put it all on a shelf and leave it at that.  Then if they have a sincere interest in improving pedestrian and traffic circulation at Larkspur Landing, they can simply begin a new and more normal Circulation Improvement Planning process with a new scoping process, new public input and hearings, and a new EIR.  And if there’s something that was learned from the SAP process that has any value toward that end, then one would assume they would learn from it and do it better next time.



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