Parents, school staff and county administrators gathered in the West Marin School gym on Monday to discuss potential improvements to the routes children take to and from the school, from downtown up to the junction with Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. The meeting was conducted by the Safe Routes to School program, part of the Transportation Authority of Marin.
“This evening is an opportunity for ideas, thoughts and questions to be raised and documented,” Shoreline Superintendent Bob Raines said.
David Parisi, project manager for Safe Routes to School, walked the audience through some of the issues stakeholders had identified in the current pathways along Highway 1: a dirt path where grass grows high, crosswalks all too easy to ignore and paths that do not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
He said his team had come up with a few potential remedies, including the installation of perpendicular, striped “zebra crosswalks” and a flashing, button-operated pedestrian signal similar to the one in front of Lagunitas School.
Sergio Ruiz, a pedestrian and bicycle program coordinator at Caltrans, said the state agency had money to work on larger infrastructure projects on the highway, but that due to the slow-moving nature of the organization no projects would begin until 2022 or 2023—a statement that elicited criticism from parents.
“You’re not going to do anything till 2022, is that correct? My son’s going to be in high school by then. He uses pathways regularly and almost got killed in front of the school,” Capella Parrish said. “I know the history of Caltrans. You aren’t going to make any changes until a kid gets killed.”
Mr. Parisi and Mr. Ruiz stressed that although any Caltrans work would not be undertaken for a few more years, it was possible that smaller projects could be tackled by the Transportation Authority of Marin during the summer. Mr. Parisi said the next round of TAM’s grant funding would begin in the spring, and he said it “could win substantial funds to do some of the things you guys were talking about.”
Yet there was a range of opinions about what changes should be made. When Mr. Parisi said he wanted to make sure that none of the changes would alter the rural character of the town and make it look “like San Francisco,” Ms. Parrish responded, “I want it to look like San Francisco—I want my kid to be seen.”
But another parent, Josh Luftig, disagreed. “A lot of the reason many of us live here is the rural nature of this town,” he said. “We’ve already seen signs appear in middle of town and pretty intensive crossing stuff happening in the middle of town. It used to be you could stand in one end of downtown and it would appear as it did 100 years ago—that has changed in the past year. These are core values of the people who have lived in this town for a long time, and I want that to be respected.”
Some attendees stressed the speeding problem near the school. “People go down that hill at 40 to 50 m.p.h. all the time,” said Bob Johnston, who tracks traffic speeds using his own radar gun. “I’m talking about much more fundamental things that underlie safety problems for the school.”
At the meeting’s end, Mr. Parisi thanked everyone for their feedback and said his team would put together a competitive grant application that incorporates the community’s thoughts and additions, like striped crosswalks and beacons.
“It’s really a safety issue,” said Dolores Gonzales, who often walks children from the school to the Dance Palace, both workplaces for her. “If it’s not possible to do [work] before 2022, at least the flashing blinks or something—please.”