Cyclists ride on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toward San Rafael on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. (Sherry LaVars/Marin Independent Journal)

By WILL HOUSTON | whouston@marinij.com | Marin Independent Journal
PUBLISHED: November 21, 2022 at 6:50 a.m. | UPDATED: December 2, 2022 at 1:18 p.m.

Rubio Hernandez of San Rafael rides towards Richmond on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. (Sherry LaVars/Marin Independent Journal)

The bicycle and pedestrian path on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge has entered a critical final year of a four-year test run, with studies so far showing it has had declining use but also causes no significant traffic impacts for East Bay commuters entering Marin County.

The $20 million path opened three years ago this month as part of a pilot project led by Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The path is on the upper deck where the emergency pullout lane existed and is separated from two lanes of traffic by a moveable barrier. The pilot project also opened a third lane to vehicle traffic on the lower, eastbound deck during the peak afternoon commute period to the East Bay.

Project leaders and proponents say the path has been a success so far and has fulfilled a decades-old vision to create the first transbay path connecting the North Bay and East Bay.

“This was a huge benefit, especially at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Warren Wells, the policy and planning director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. “We saw a great number of people riding the pathway every day, especially on the weekends.

“Though the usage has tempered somewhat, we are excited about future improvements, especially on the Marin side that will actually result in an all-ages and abilities pathway between the bridge and the closest towns in Marin,” he said.
Critics, including East Bay residents and the Bay Area Council business association, say the path should be opened up to vehicles during the mornings to provide relief to the tens of thousands of commuters stuck in traffic as opposed to a handful of weekday cyclists.

“Virtually all of these drivers have no other practical means to get to work,” Bay Area Council president and chief executive officer Jim Wunderman wrote in a letter to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission this month. “Since they often come from very long distances and from all over the East Bay, biking, walking and public transit are not practical commute options.”
Crossing data collected by electronic sensors on the path show the majority of users are cyclists and that most of the use occurs on weekends. Average monthly crossings during the path’s first year were 7,800, declining to about 6,500 the following year and 5,700 this last year.

A study of the bike path’s usage and traffic impacts released by the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies in June found that 100 to 300 cyclists used the path in each direction on Saturdays or Sundays since January 2021, or an average of 190 cyclists per direction each day. For weekdays, traffic ranged from 50 to 75 cyclists in each direction, or an average of 68 cyclists per direction each day, according to the study.

Pedestrian use was far lower at 14 to 24 one-way crossings per day on weekends and eight to 11 crossings on weekdays, according to the study.

By comparison, more than 80,000 vehicles cross the 5.5-mile bridge on weekdays. Westbound drivers can experience close to half-hour delays during peak commute times.

While critics maintain that the bike lane has worsened traffic congestion for morning westbound commuters on the bridge and its approach, the UC Berkeley study found traffic impacts to be minimal.

“Despite the slight capacity reduction, the extent of the congestion upstream of the toll plaza and average peak travel times from I-80 to the end of the bridge on weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays have remained similar to the before conditions,” the study states. “This can be explained by traffic demands remaining slightly below before conditions, particularly at the start and end of the peak periods, due to lingering Covid-related factors.”

Traffic flow on the bridge was shown to be reduced by 7% on weekdays and 4% on weekends, the study found, with peak-hour travel times increasing by less than one minute. Broken-down vehicles or crashes would cause much longer delays, the study noted. The study also found the bike path has not affected the frequency or severity of traffic crashes or incidents on the bridge and has not significantly affected response times.

Andrew Fremier, an MTC official, said it has made several improvements to response times to traffic incidents on the bridge in the past three years.

“I think it’s important to recognize that the path is not contributing to the congestion in Richmond,” Fremier said.

At the same time, the UC Berkeley review found that opening the third vehicle lane on the lower deck has provided several benefits to eastbound commuters. Congestion issues that existed before the lane opened in 2018 have largely “disappeared” and reduced travel times by 14 minutes from Highway 101 to the toll plaza, according to the study. Traffic incidents and crashes on the bridge have also had a 70% reduction, according to the study.

Fremier said the results have prompted East Bay residents and commuters to question why they can’t also have the same benefits on their side of the bridge.

“People have a feeling that the lower deck cleared things up, so why wouldn’t that work on the upper deck?” he said.
Joe Fisher, a 78-year-old Richmond resident and president of the Coronado Neighborhood Council, said many of the residents in his neighborhood and other nearby neighborhoods commute to Marin County for work but can’t afford to live there because they have below-median income.

These are the people, many of them Black and Latino, who have had to bear the brunt of the impacts of the pandemic, the pressures from recent high gas prices and the major traffic delays, Fisher said.

“It became a sense of urgency with people that work there every day being backed up some 16 to 20 minutes a day trying to cross the bridge,” Fisher said. “We felt we needed immediate relief and not waiting for the pilot program to be completed.”

As the frustrations built in various neighborhoods, East Bay residents partnered with the Bay Area Council to form the Common Sense Transportation Coalition. The group is calling for the bike path to be opened to vehicles during peak commute hours. The group is not opposed to a bike lane and has also suggested that a second bike lane be placed on the lower bridge so that cyclists can still have access in the mornings.

The group and the Richmond City Council have also called on the MTC to conduct air pollution studies in neighborhoods bordering Interstate 580 and its major arterial roads that experience congestion.

“It’s not an attack on any aspect of the pilot program,” Richmond Councilman Demnlus Johnson said during an Oct. 25 discussion on the bike path. “It’s actually to enhance it with more information around air quality.”

But relieving westbound congestion isn’t as simple as opening up the third lane on the upper deck, according to local planners.

A study by the Transportation Authority of Marin — the state congestion management agency for the county — released last year showed that opening a third lane would only shift the bottlenecks from the Richmond Bridge toll plaza to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, “thereby shifting a regional issue to a local issue.”

Dan Cherrier, a Transportation Authority of Marin official, said “some major infrastructure improvements would be required” on the Marin side of the bridge to achieve some traffic flow improvements. These improvements are estimated to range from $70 million to $90 million. If these were implemented, commuters exiting the bridge toward Highway 101 would save about 11 minutes of travel time, the study states. About 70% of commuters who drive into Marin over the bridge travel to northbound Highway 101.

However, travel times to southbound Highway 101 using Sir Francis Drake Boulevard would actually increase by three minutes despite these improvements, the study found. The only way travel times to southbound Highway 101 would improve is if a direct connector was built between westbound I-580 and southbound Highway 101, which is estimated to cost more than $220 million, according to the study. The authority is studying a potential connector from northbound Highway 101 to eastbound Interstate 580 that could include a direct connector in the opposite direction.

Instead, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is focusing on relieving congestion on the Richmond side of the bridge, Fremier said. Some of these projects, which have been delayed by years, include removing the old toll booths and reconfiguring lanes in the toll plaza to improve traffic flow. Other projects include extending the carpool lane farther at the approach to the bridge and improving access to the freeway from the Richmond Parkway.

As part of these projects, the commission is also set to work with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to model how air pollution impacts in nearby communities would change before and after the projects are completed.

Greg Nudd, deputy air pollution control officer for the district, said the agency has identified Richmond as the second-most overburdened city in the region for air pollution exposure. Exposure to exhaust fumes, mostly from trucks, and particulate matter from tires and brake pads kills thousands of people each year and contributes to high rates of asthma among children, Nudd said.

While there has been a push to relieve congestion on the bridge, Nudd said that could have negative consequences for air quality.

“If you reduce congestion and then people think that it’s not a big pain to drive across that bridge and then you end up increasing cars and you’ve de-bottlenecked the flow of traffic, you can actually have more air pollution in the end because you’ve eliminated congestion but now you have more traffic flowing through,” Nudd said.

Marin County Supervisor Damon Connolly, an MTC board member, said he supports the calls for converting the bike path into a hybrid lane that opens to cars during the morning commute.

“The evidence is that the bike lane is largely being used as a recreational asset primarily on weekends,” Connolly said. “In the meantime, traffic is back. And the fact of a largely empty bike lane during a.m. commute hours while traffic is crawling for our teachers, home health care workers, delivery truck drivers, store clerks, public servants and so many other people cannot be overlooked.”

Advocates for the path, such as Wells of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, said spending money to increase car traffic runs counter to efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. The money would be better spent on funding lower-emission modes of travel, such as transit and other transportation options, he said.

“It’s five lanes for people driving and one lane for people walking and biking,” Wells said. “We feel like that is a bare minimum for providing that access for people traveling without cars.”