Marin Voice: Sausalito’s Alexander Avenue needs to be safer for cyclists, pedestrians

Image yourself visiting the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time.

After landing at San Francisco International Airport, it’s an easy ride on public transportation to your hotel in the Union Square. Once settled, you set out on the time-honored tradition of riding a bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge.

You pick out a rental bike, strap on your helmet and head west past the Marina neighborhood and Crissy Field, taking in the sights. Crossing the bridge itself is a little hairy, as you share the 10-foot-wide sidewalk with pedestrians and other bicyclists, all buffeted by crosswinds.

After taking a selfie at Vista Point, you head north on Alexander Avenue toward Sausalito. At first, you think you’ve made a wrong turn. The bike path ends abruptly and you are dumped onto a freeway off-ramp.

Now, you’re riding down a steep hill on a gravel-filled shoulder shared with pedestrians. Cars blast past at 45 mph, inches from your handlebars. Clutching your brakes, you dodge the potholes. Hearing a truck coming up fast from behind, you try to give as much room as possible, but hit a patch of gravel and your tires go out from under you. As you skid to a stop, you watch the truck’s wheels roll past, mere feet from your head.

After a moment, you stand up and survey the damage. Aside from some nasty road rash, you’re not badly hurt. “It could have been worse,” you think.

A couple cyclists stop to check on you, but the driver is long gone. The bike is rideable and Sausalito is downhill, so you continue on, a little worse for wear. Arriving in Sausalito you dismount and catch your breath. You find relief in an ice cream cone and buy some fudge for later.

You’d planned to ride back to San Francisco to enjoy views of the Pacific Ocean, but the prospect now seems too daunting. Instead, you hop on the ferry back to the city, returning your bike and vowing to skip Sausalito next time you visit.

Experiences like this play out month after month on Alexander, the primary bike route between the bridge and Sausalito. Over the past 10 years, a person has been hurt badly enough to warrant a police report an average of every six weeks on this mile-long stretch.

At the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, we think Marin deserves better. Why should the gateway to the North Bay look like a grubby rural frontage road, with no bike lanes and no sidewalk, only gravel-filled shoulders? Why should visitors from all over the world be treated to a harsh, unwelcoming, dangerous experience simply for choosing to enter Marin by bike?

While visitors might be forced to brave Alexander Avenue only once, the many daily commuters traveling by bike from Marin to San Francisco must endure these conditions day in and day out. Talk to any regular commuter and they’ll share stories of countless close calls, or even a crash or two like the one described above.

We’ll also never know how many people who might have chosen to make the short, 3-mile trip from Sausalito to San Francisco by bike or electric-assist bike since many locals are no-doubt deterred by the harrowing conditions. Those people, who would ride on the Mill Valley-Sausalito Path but never on Alexander, simply choose to drive instead, burdening our highly congested roads and hotly contested parking.

This is why we are calling on the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District to allocate a small portion of its budget to an engineering study that would recommend concrete near-term and long-term solutions for Alexander.

It should be retired from its place as Marin’s most dangerous mile of road for bicyclists.

A study, once completed, would set the district up to receive state and federal infrastructure dollars that would repave the road and make it safe for all users, whether they be tourists, daily commuters, or recreational riders seeking to enjoy the majesty of Marin.

We hope the district staff and board of directors, which includes Marin supervisors Stephanie Moulton-Peters and Dennis Rodoni, as well as Tiburon Councilmember Holli Thier, will see the value in making our county’s link to the Golden Gate as beautiful and welcoming as we know Marin can be.

Warren J. Wells is policy and planning director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition.