Richmond-San Rafael Bridge bike path change could start in fall

The change would enable planners to learn whether opening the emergency shoulder would significantly improve travel time on heavy commute days.

A plan to remove the bicycle and pedestrian lane from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for four days a week could begin this fall, regional transportation planners said.

The proposal, approved by the Bay Area Toll Authority in May, would remove the multipurpose lane on the upper deck Mondays through Thursdays, freeing the shoulder to use in emergencies. The lane would be reopened to cyclists and pedestrians Fridays through Sundays.

The change would enable planners to learn whether opening the emergency shoulder would significantly improve travel time on heavy commute days, said Lisa Klein, director of field operations for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the agency leading the project.

Plans are also brewing to introduce a bike shuttle on days the path is not open, she said.

The path, which is separated by a moveable barrier, opened in 2019 as a four-year pilot project.

Klein, who presented the update to the Transportation Authority of Marin last month, said the plan is a modified extension of that pilot program that MTC anticipates running through the end of 2025.

Planners are seeking a permit from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission for the extended pilot. They hope for approval this summer, she said at the June 27 meeting.

“What does the extension achieve?” she said. “It keeps the path open. It allows us to gather more data to inform the right balance for a permanent access solution while that other work progresses.”

Klein said that at the same time, planners are taking another look at what it would take to open the westbound shoulder for high-occupancy vehicles and transit during peak hours.

Critics of the path, mostly commuters and their employers, say traffic is worse than ever, while supporters maintain the path is a successful multimodal connection between the North Bay and the East Bay.

The path averages about 140 bicycle trips a day on weekdays and 360 trips a day on weekends. By comparison, the bridge serves 35,000 drivers a day.

Overall traffic volume has returned to about 90% of what it was before the pandemic. Traffic during peak hours is close to what it once was, Klein said.

The initial pilot study concluded there is no evidence that the path creates more traffic congestion, Klein said.

However, the study did not specifically look at what happens to travel times during wrecks, breakdowns or other emergencies on the bridge, and that’s the impetus for the extension.

Incident rates overall are down. However, during commuter crunches they’re up more than 20%, KIein said. She said that is interesting because it is when the incidents are more likely to cause backups, she said.

Klein said the average emergency response time is 16 minutes, which is three minutes longer than before the pilot project. By rule of thumb, each minute of delayed response multiplies the traffic delay by a factor of four, Klein said.

“This really can create a lot of uncertainty about travel time and that’s really a big deal when you got to get to work on time,” Klein said.

Moving the path barrier takes about two hours. It will cost about $300,000 for the duration of the extended pilot to open and close the path on the designated days, Klein said.

The pilot is planned to be extended through 2025 because that’s when a suite of projects known as “Richmond-San Rafael Forward” is expected to come online.

The first is an open-road tolling and extended carpool lane project at an estimated cost of $24 million. Other near-term projects include a $5 million Richmond Parkway interchange and transit improvements.

The presentation to the TAM board allowed Marin officials to offer comments on the plans.

TAM board member Maribeth Bushey, a member of the San Rafael City Council, said she knows the business community is interested in making sure employees get to work on time.

“They’re not all coming here just to sightsee, as lovely as Marin is,” she said.

Marin County Supervisor Katie Rice, a TAM board member, said she is worried that the proposed change could set an expectation for drivers that the shoulder would eventually open to vehicle traffic.

She said its important to communicate to the public that opening the shoulder to traffic is going to be a significant investment.

A study by TAM showed it would cost $70 million to $90 million to reconfigure the western side of the bridge in San Rafael to handle the new traffic flow of a third lane.

The new study, led by MTC and Caltrans, is taking a closer look at costs to open the lane for high-occupancy vehicles and transit only.

“This is a constrained old bridge that’s being asked to do a lot of things for a lot of users that it probably wasn’t designed for,” said Marin County Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters, a TAM board member who is the county’s representative at the MTC. “And so it’s really, how do we optimize the functionality and balance out all the different users?”

Moulton-Peters said that while crashes and breakdowns don’t happen often, officials have heard public testimony that commuters are leaving an hour earlier to avert any potential delays.

“That is the very real thing that makes this breakdown lane attractive. Even though it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that helpful, I think it will be,” she said.

Meanwhile, Klein said the Bay Area Toll Authority has directed staff to pursue making permanent the eastbound commuter lane. The lane opened as a pilot program in 2018 and relieves drivers of about 14 to 17 minutes on afternoon commute trips to the East Bay.