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City of Novato
Is the Redwood and Grant Transfer Improvement Project an "improvement?"
City council members and city staff, with no transit design facility experience, decide early on "a center platform would be nice" per the staff recommendation, without proper review of all options. Suddenly the project is "off to the races" with a consultant that will give you what you want. (Mark Thomas and Company have the following philosophy on their website, "At Mark Thomas & Company, we view ourselves as an extension of our clients' staff."). Deja vu all over again as when the county supervisors and staff decided they were software experts and Deloitte and Touché gave them exactly what they asked for. I think you know how that ended.
Golden Gate Transit (GGT) steps in and identifies all the flaws in the center platform with the weave design, untested and untried apparently anywhere else. Consultant provides various locations in the US with the alleged same design. Review of these sites reveal that these examples are not anything like this proposed design. The city staff apparently did not review these examples to check their operation and safety issues, a best practice for risk management.
The city council and staff, having decided to give up a proven and tested design that has operated efficiently and safely for 35 years, now digging in to defend their original premature decision at all cost. Why, politics, special interests pressure or pride? They are ignoring and did not even consider the 2010 proposal by a Marin Transit consultant, approved by the the current majority of city council members, that is a common sense up grade to the current facility and meets all current and projected needs for this facility. City council and staff ignore declining ridership at this location and the future impact of SMART. Staff then cancels the only public meeting with citizens that was part of the consultant's contract because too many issues will be raised. At the same time city staff decides not to mention "the center platform design" and makes sure it is not even discussed in the Farmers Market survey to justify the proposal.
So what we have proposed is a new controversial design, untested and untried, with newly created blind spots for bus drivers, merge issues and reduced distances for turning lanes, decided before proper analysis but still being pushed by certain city council members and staff and supported by TAM directors. No one truly knows how safe this will be for pedestrians as there are no examples to review their operational and safety history for buses or pedestrians. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Currently 288 citizens have signed a petition to stop this ill fated proposal despite the city staff canceling the one planned public meeting as too many issues will be raised.
The best capsule summary description would be breaking something that has successfully operated safely for 35 years rather than upgrading and improving it, then agreeing to transit operators mitigation attempts to get their approval but make no sense for the citizens of Novato, pedestrians or drivers. If not for GGT the city staff and the consultant review would not have even known about the bus driver blind spots and turning lane and merge reductions due to apparent inadequate traffic analysis.
Al Dugan
Novato