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SMART to Delay Hundreds of Thousands of 101 Users
Want to do some good at Christmas - how about helping to save over three hundred thousand people collective hours of their time by sending a short email to the right person appealing for common sense? It'll take you 2 minutes - and you can copy and paste from the email below to Supervisor Damon Connolly dconnolly@marincounty.org (click on the link to bring up a mail compose window).
Delaying Hundreds of Thousands to Benefit a Handful of Train Riders
SMART's extension to Larkspur is likely to...
- help 231 daily train riders by the year 2035 (official SMART number)
- cause significant delays to 362,390 users of highway 101 (official Caltrans / DoT 2015 number).
- SMART Daily Riders (2035 numbers) vs Impacted 101 Daily Users at Lincoln (2015 numbers)
I have just sent the following Supervisor Damon Connolly, who is both our district supervisor and our county representative on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. I encourage others sharing my concern to send a similarly worded email. Damon can be reached at dconnolly@marincounty.org
Letter to Damon Connolly
Damon,
Can you please look into having MTC conduct appropriate traffic analysis and mitigation planning around the SMART extension to Larkspur?
The extension is likely to cause backups onto 101 that should be analyzed, caused by:
- crossings of 2nd and 3rd street
- relocation of bus services to surface streets from the Bettini Transit Center
- Map of Immediate Affected Area - Downtown San Rafael
It is really important that the train does not exacerbate 101 backups.2015 official Caltrans traffic counts for highway 101show peak daily traffic of 217,000 vehicles on 101 at Lincoln Avenue - with 1.67 occupants (US DoT average car occupancy) this translates to 362,390 people.
- 2015 Caltrans Daily Traffic Count for highway 101 shows 217,000 cars daily passing at Lincoln Avenue.
By comparison to 362,390 people using 101 at Lincoln, SMART estimates in itsEnvironmental Impact Report (page 264) that it will carry 231 riders with the extension to Larkspur, but not until the year 2035. These are SMART and MTC 's official numbers. See page 264 of the SMART Environmental Impact report.
- SMART Larkspur EIR Ridership Forecast (2035)
It's important that MTC conducts analysis and performs mitigation with respect to these relative numbers:
- 362,390 users of 101 (today)
- 231 train users to Larkspur (in the year 2035)
That's 1,568 times as many people using 101 as using SMART based on official numbers, or 156,878% - I'm sure you must also find this cost benefit as absurd as I do, to delay so many people for such a small benefit, which is why this analysis is so critical.
The likelihood of traffic being worsened on 101 by the train's extension is significant - and certainly foreseeable. It's vital that this exponentially greater majority of 101 users are not adversely impacted by the tiny number of SMART train users.
I strongly encourage others who find this cost / benefit absurd or who are simply concerned by the additional traffic congestion SMART will have on 101, to contact Damon Connolly (dconnolly@marincounty.org) and ask that he have MTC conduct appropriate traffic analysis and impact mitigation performed. The more people that tell Damon that this important the more likely he will step up and represent those hundreds of thousands of affected 101 users.