The proposed replacement of the 86-year-old Green Bridge in Point Reyes Station has spurred doubts about the necessity of a new crossing as opposed to a retrofit. That’s largely because of fears about traffic at an intersection already overloaded on weekends and holidays: Caltrans has proposed a one-lane temporary bridge during two or three years of construction. Other frustrations include the significant widening of the bridge, as new bridges must meet modern design guidelines for lane width, shoulders and sidewalks. But Caltrans has not listed retrofitting as an option because of weaknesses, corrosion and uncertainties about pier strength, the agency said. The comment period ends June 20.
This month, both the Mainstreet Moms and the Point Reyes Station Village Association convened discussions on the project. About 40 people showed up to the Moms meeting, but no one was interested in talking about the four alternatives that Caltrans has proposed to replace the 86-year-old bridge. “We were more expecting to have people debate designs,” said Dewey Livingston, who gave a presentation on the history of the bridge. “That’s what we went through. But people didn’t seem to want to talk about that as much as people didn’t want it to happen.”
None of the dozen or so attendees at the village association meeting spoke up for a new bridge either, largely because of traffic concerns during holidays and weekends, when cars can pile up at the intersection between Levee Road and Highway 1. In February, over President’s Day weekend, cars stretched from the intersection to Whitehouse Pool.
Marshall Livingston, who heads up the association’s design review committee, believes it would cause “gridlock,” and the owner of a bed and breakfast owner chimed in that businesses like hers “rely on people having a pleasant experience.”
The group plans to draft a comment letter advocating for maintenance and a retrofit. The main concern for the group’s president, Ken Otter, was the timeline; he called the impact of the temporary bypass “unacceptable” and did not feel the agency had done enough to demonstrate to the community that an entirely new bridge is absolutely necessary.
But not everyone is opposed. Scott McMorrow, the manager of the Inverness Public Utility District, has said he supports a new bridge, a critical connection between Point Reyes Station and Inverness, because it would inevitably be stronger and more reliable.
A 2011 Caltrans report states that the bridge has weak truss connections, weak connections between the concrete deck and the beams and other inadequacies.
Maintenance logs showed that portions of the steel truss had problematic corrosion, Caltrans spokesman Steve Williams told the Light.
In an email, Mr. Williams rattled off a list of reasons why a retrofit was not listed as an option. It would add more weight to the bridge, potentially reducing its “live load” rating, or the weight of vehicles allowed to cross it. (Large semis are already prohibited.) The necessary removal and replacement of various components to make a retrofit work might not even be possible, but if it were, the required work would be “difficult and expensive,” he said.
He also said that the old piers pose multiple problems. Not only are they “severely under-reinforced,” but there is “no accurate record of the type of piles used for the piers or their length. This lack of information would make it impossible to accurately assess the strength of the substructure for seismic loads.”
The comment period for the Lagunitas Creek Bridge project ends on June 20, a 60-day extension from the original deadline.
Email comments to [email protected] or send them to Oliver Iberian, District Branch Chief, California Department of Transportation, District 4 Office of Environmental Analysis, P.O. Box 23660, Oakland, CA 94623. A draft environmental impact review is expected in mid-2016.