Last Tuesday afternoon, West Marin School teacher Chris Eckert was heading home from work on his bicycle when a Prius exiting Green Bridge Gas & Auto at the intersection of Shoreline Highway and Mesa Road struck him. The driver stopped and called an ambulance, but Mr. Eckert declined a ride; instead, he went to the hospital the next day. Though more or less uninjured, he said he has been having headaches, and he believes he may have had a concussion.
“Just kind of a freak accident,” said Mr. Eckert, who teaches sixth grade and runs an all-school daily exercise program at the school called “We P.E.”
Mr. Eckert regularly rides from his home in Inverness Park to school and back. This year he and a group of administrators and parents have been encouraging students to bike, walk or take the bus to school, to promote “green” commuting.
His accident occurred the day before National Bike to Work Day, and the school has taken it as a wake-up call to take a closer look at pedestrian safety in the half-mile between the campus and downtown. It’s a short stretch that many elementary and middle school students traverse daily and where, during the afterschool rush hour, cars tend to speed down the hill to the heart of Point Reyes Station. (Middle and high school students also ride skateboards along that stretch on weekends, when tourists flood the town.)
This year, an increasing number of students and teachers have been biking to school, and many more walk. Mr. Eckert often meets a handful of students at the bus stop at Balboa Avenue in Inverness Park to commute to school together.
Last Friday, a task force organized by principal Matt Nagle met to assess safety conditions on Shoreline Highway. The group took a stroll up and down both sides of the road, much of which lacks a sidewalk and is flanked by grass and gravel. Mr. Nagle noted that drivers not paying attention to students pose a serious threat to safety. “[Mr. Eckert’s] accident illustrates that a conversation is needed,” he said. “The task force is a first step for designating a safe route for our kids.”
Parents and representatives from Caltrans, the Marin County Department of Public Works and Safe Routes to Schools, a program under the Transportation Authority of Marin, attended the meeting. Since the latter program received an invitation to collaborate with the school earlier this year, it has helped put on weekly “Walk and Roll Wednesdays.”
An engineering team from Safe Routes to Schools is drafting a plan of action to provide recommendations for how Caltrans and the county might tweak roadside pathways and the intersection of Mesa Road and Shoreline.
That team, program director Wendi Kallins said, will return in a month or two to conduct further reconnaissance of the area. It will also have to decide whether to recommend new traffic controls, such as stop signs or stoplights, which could be contentious.
John Neville, an assistant engineer for the Department of Public Works, cautioned the task force that such controls could worsen congestion on the already traffic-heavy road. Bikers and drivers alike, he added, can also miss or ignore additional controls, creating new dangerous conditions. “You’re creating a safety hazard that wasn’t here before,” Mr. Neville said. “You need to consider the unintended consequences.”
Nonetheless, Ms. Kallins insisted that some sort of change must be made. “There’s no such thing as a perfectly safe route. But we can have a recommended route,” she said.
During the last six years that he has helmed the sheriff’s substation in Point Reyes Station, Lieutenant Doug Pittman has witnessed drivers rolling through a stop sign in front of the station and speeding north onto Shoreline Highway—as fast as 50 miles per hour past the school—during afternoons when children are walking home. More often than not, these drivers are local.
“It’s amazing to me that most of the violators are locals,” Lt. Pittman said. “They say that they were unaware that the school was there, which is strange, or that their mind was occupied.”
This summer, the school will collaborate with Safe Routes to Schools to host what they are tentatively calling a “Bike Rodeo.” Cones and temporary signs will be set up in the parking lot to serve as a practice safety course for student cyclists. There will also be an all-school assembly on bike and street safety and, the school hopes, bike skills classes for older students.
And as this school year winds down, Mr. Eckert said he will continue teaching bike and pedestrian safety to his students. “You remind them to look both ways and not rely on the drivers to stop at the cross walk,” Mr. Eckert said. “Going green, trying to get them out of a car and getting some exercise in the morning: all of these things help.”