Faced with mounting concerns about restrooms and parking overwhelmed by tourism in coastal Marin, the county has begun work on a study aimed at assessing visitor impacts and projecting the future growth of tourism in the region through 2065.
Encompassing Point Reyes Station, Olema, Marshall, Bolinas and Stinson Beach, the study will focus on developing 50-year forecasts for parking and restroom demands based on visitor-impact data. Ultimately, the data and forecasts will guide recommendations on what kinds of additional parking and restroom facilities might be needed in West Marin and where they could potentially be put.
The study, conducted by AECOM Technical Services, Inc., comes with a more than $60,000 price tag. It is slated for completion in six to eight months, and will be followed by a public meeting to present the findings.
Last year, the Point Reyes National Seashore’s visitor center at Bear Valley logged over 2.5 million visitors. With the crowds come lines of cars that stretch for miles on busy holiday weekends, clogging roadways, blocking routes for emergency vehicles and forcing closures of popular parking lots.
Meanwhile, heavy visitor loads have pushed bathrooms to the limit. Used 10 times beyond its capacity one fall weekend, the septic system at Point Reyes Station’s sole public restroom brimmed with sewage and nearly overflowed before county maintenance crews pumped out the sludge. Now, the bathroom is pumped once a week under normal conditions and twice during busy weekends, whereas five years ago it was pumped only twice the entire year.
“Since then, the bathroom has been enormously overwhelmed by tourists and is being pumped frequently on weekends,” said Liza Crosse, an aide to Supervisor Steve Kinsey.
Local leaders and business owners gathered last year to air their concerns at two closed meetings, the second of which was attended by county and California Department of Transportation officials in October. Those meetings and the restroom crisis prompted the county to commission the new study, which will provide the first comprehensive set of data on current visitation and projections for all county, state and federal parks in West Marin, and the towns that neighbor them.
But while many locals have long stressed the need for infrastructure improvements, some wonder if government agencies have the best interests of West Marin’s communities in mind. Speaking at a meeting of the Point Reyes Station Village Association last week, several attendees worried the county and National Park Service may want to accommodate tourists at the expense of residents.
“We’re prey to the park service,” said Tom Quinn, an artist and longtime Point Reyes Station resident. “It’s their visitors, and we’re taking care of them. Neither the park nor the county have helped us.”
Others wondered whether locals would have any input on where additional restrooms and parking will be located. “You do not want them to come in and impose anything on your community,” said Bob Johnston, an Inverness residents and retired professor of land use planning at the University of California, Davis. “Period. The process is just rotten.”
Ms. Crosse clarified that the study would not serve as an implementation plan for new restrooms and parking, but rather as a broad-brush document for evaluating tourism. She noted also that the consulting firm intends to seek public input by forming a working group composed of community representatives as well as county, national park and state transportation officials.
In the meantime, the village association plans to invite other community organizations to host a forum on tourism on Sept. 22, after the anticipated busy Labor Day holiday weekend. The forum will mark the third such coastal meeting that the village association has co-hosted this year.
“This is a good opportunity to reach out to all the communities because they’re all going to be affected by the study,” said Ken Levin, a Point Reyes Station resident who runs a window-washing business.
Meanwhile, Caltrans has also started work on a report that will evaluate current and 20-year projected conditions along Highway 1 in Marin and Sonoma Counties. The report will look at ways to improve the route by analyzing options to relieve congestion and increase parking. Caltrans officials met with county representatives, including Supervisor Kinsey, at the Red Barn in the Point Reyes National Seashore’s headquarters last month for a workshop to collect early input.
“This workshop was designed to generate ideas from partners on key needs and priorities for [Highway 1] in Marin and Sonoma counties,” Caltrans Senior Transportation Planner Kang Tang wrote in an email to the Light. “It provided a unique opportunity for partners to collaboratively identify assets, issues and opportunities for [the road].”