Bolinas may become the first coastal town in Marin with resident-only parking permits on public streets, albeit for three hours in the night. In search of more reliable street parking downtown, frustrated townspeople are looking into issuing permits for residents along Brighton Avenue, where beachgoers, vans and R.V.s sometimes crowd out locals. A previous ballot measure that enacted an overnight ban on large vehicles was renewed last fall, but some saw it as incomplete. This spring, a committee of volunteers is preparing to survey downtown homeowners and seek a new ordinance that would limit long-term street parking on one side of the street to residents from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.
“Our goal is to put something together that meets the resident need and doesn’t start riling people up over issues that don’t even exist,” said Sherry Hirsch, a Wharf Road resident who serves as secretary for the committee.
The plan is still in its early stages, but the six-member committee met with Supervisor Dennis Rodoni and presented its progress to the Bolinas Community Public Utility District earlier this month.
The California Coastal Commission could prove to be a major obstacle. No coastal towns in Marin or Sonoma Counties have such programs, and the commission has rejected efforts by local governments elsewhere in the state to issue residential parking permits because they interfered with visitors’ ability to access the coastline. Public access to the coast is a key element of the California Coastal Act, which the commission administers.
Residential parking permits within the coastal zone are “almost always fraught with public access impacts,” said Noaki Schwartz, a public information officer with the coastal commission, because they effectively privatize public parking spots.
“This is especially impactful in small coastal communities with limited parking like Bolinas,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Any program that we would consider would have to be very narrowly tailored to the issues articulated by the community that they are purportedly trying to address, with appropriate mitigations for impacts to public access.”
Coastal commission staffers have met with members of the resident permit parking plan committee and county staff to give feedback on the permit program. Ms. Hirsch said their input was positive, but the commission can’t determine whether the restriction would be fully consistent with the Coastal Act until the volunteers develop a formal project proposal.
Measure X, which Marin’s Deputy Zoning Administrator renewed last November, already bars oversized vehicles from parking on downtown Bolinas streets overnight. The ordinance, first passed in 2018 and aimed at people who camp in R.V.s on Wharf Road, Brighton Avenue and Park Avenue, had continued support from many downtown residents who said it had somewhat improved the parking situation.
In 2020, the rules were expanded to both sides of the streets after a county report found they had little impact. But because the rules still make exceptions for cars and pickups, those vehicles continue to take up parking on downtown streets for weeks on end, irking some locals.
Yet many of the campers themselves are locals. Bolinas is the West Marin town with the highest number of people living in vehicles, and community groups say many of them have longstanding ties to the community.
Joshua Faulkner has lived in Bolinas, both in houses and vehicles, for 30 years. His bus was towed multiple times for violating the Measure X restriction, and he now lives out of a minivan on Brighton Avenue.
Mr. Faulkner said new parking rules are evidence of change in Bolinas, where locals famously used to take down the sign that pointed visitors to town and, more recently, used stickers to change “No Parking” signs to read “Bo Parking.” “We don’t need any more signs,” he said.
Ms. Hirsch said the new parking permits would supplement, not replace, the Measure X rules, and would apply to a much smaller area: the eastern side of Brighton Avenue. In April, the committee plans to survey the roughly two dozen homeowners along the affected stretch of street to gauge support and estimate the number of vehicles that would need permits. There would likely be a limited number, Ms. Hirsch said, but most of the properties also have off-street parking spots.
“Not every house is going to get permits for all their vehicles,” she said. “They’re not all going to get permits for their guests.”
Unlike Measure X, a ballot measure that faced a vote by the whole town, Ms. Hirsch hopes the narrower Brighton Avenue restrictions could move forward through a permit process after one-on-one conversations with the street’s residents.
Another idea for solving the town’s parking woes is in an even earlier stage: earlier this month, BCPUD chose board member Don Smith as its representative on a newly formed Alternative Parking and Shuttle Committee for Bolinas. Suggested by Supervisor Rodoni, the new committee will meet to discuss options for easing the burden of drivers entering Bolinas during busy months, including a shuttle that would bring in visitors from an offsite parking lot. On weekends, a similar shuttle ferries visitors from a parking lot along Highway 101 to Muir Woods National Monument, where parking frequently fills up and must be reserved in advance.
This article was clarified on Feb. 27 to include that the BCPUD committee and the county are exploring limiting parking to residents with permits from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. only.