Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

The race board has 16 student riders. The club and team have 12 parent volunteer coaches in total. Larkspur Canyon Diva is one of the most competitive teams in Northern California as well. One of the reasons why we should do this is because there will be many benefits to the school programs in Larkspur-Moderre. The Redwood High School Mountain Bike Team is the best team in Northern California, which is the most competitive high school mountain bike team in the country. Northwood Mountain Bike Club has 62 riders and 41 pair of volunteer coaches. Amazingly, there's a junior female who's racing on the international level in the Junior World Cup in Germany and got fifth place in their race last Sunday. In summary, we have world-class youth mountain bike programs here in Northwood or Madera. A bike park would be an invaluable asset to our youth programs and anyone else interested in developing their bike skills. in the county. Bike Park here would help today's riders and tomorrow's world champions. Thank you for listening to me.

Thanks, Will.

Today, I'm here with a few of my teammates on our local mountain bike team to request future discussion on a work for Bike Park. My name is Tom DeLaw, and I'm an 8th grader at Humboldt School and large for his own to an incredible community of young riders, families, and lifelong cyclists. yet there are very few dedicated places where kids can safely ride, develop skills, and build confidence close to home. Our community sits in the middle of one of the most iconic cycling regions in the world, but local youth still lack easy access to a purpose-built facility designed specifically for bikes. Larkspur has many organized sports opportunities, but fewer accessible drop-in recreation spaces where kids can simply show up ride, and spend time outdoors with friends. A bike park provides an important outlet for independent recreation, especially for middle school and high school students. It gives teens a positive place to gather, stay active, build skills, and connect socially. Cycling has always been a part of the culture of Marin, and a bike park would strengthen that culture and tradition by creating a central gathering place where families, kids, coaches, and riders can connect to. these spaces naturally become community hubs, places where beginners learn from older riders, families spend time together outdoors, and friendships are formed around progression. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hi there. My name is Rob Webb, and I am a coach for Larkscrew Canyon Vivo. And first, again, thank you all for your service. We know this is a volunteer role. Every month, hours of your time away from your friends and family to keep our programs running. So runners, can we give it up for our commissioner? Give it up. Thank you. Seriously, thank you. What you heard tonight reflects something very real happening here in Markford and Cordova. We have an incredibly strong youth cycling culture, deeply committed parent volunteers, thriving youth programs, And hundreds of local kids riding bikes every week. There's literally hundreds of kids on bike teams. And not a lot of people know that we have one Redwood rider here tonight. But they're actually having their end of season party out in Fairfax. There's 60 riders on the team. 40 coaches on the team. And this last year, they were the champion of the most competitive league in the country. And we have one rider competing on the World Cup. Several riders competing at the national level. So it's a really, really big deal here. but you don't actually really see it or hear about it much because the competitions we compete in are really, really far away. Like you heard from the boys, we don't have a dedicated space for bikes, and that's what we hope to work with you all to develop. We have a great opportunity to do that. A bike park, like you heard, creates a safe space for independent recreation, mentorship, physical activity, and confidence building. And every kid you see out on a bike is a kid that's not on YouTube, that's not playing video games at home. We've already received over 400 community petition signatures supporting further exploration of this concept with you all. And tonight, we're just simply asking for the opportunity to continue the conversation with you and to begin exploring what a bike park in Larkspur Corridor could look like for our community. So thank you very much for your time and consideration. Thank you. Are there any other comments?

All right. That moves us to item number three, approval of the consent calendar. The purpose of the consent calendar is to group items that may be approved routinely. Anyone may request removal of an item for discussion.

Thank you, Mr. President and Chair.

Yeah.

Can we let them know that we can't respond and do all that? Yeah.

Thank you. So as Commissioner Friedle mentioned, we cannot respond to any of our comments. on your discussion. However, we may consider agendizing this for a future Parks and Recreation Commission hearing where we can have a more fruitful discussion about this topic, which I think would be a good topic for discussion as a mountain biker, founder of the Redwood Mountain Bike Team. Well, myself. Yeah. Thanks, Commissioner Pernell. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? I make a motion to approve the consent calendar. Is there a second? Thank you.

Thanks for coming.

Thank you all. Thank you. All those in favor? I'm on. I'm on.

I'm on.

I'm on. Oh, yeah, I wasn't there. So I believe there's three of us.

So this is the three of us.

This is also a kind of procedural too. I've learned as we're trying to approve.

I make mushroom. And I separate them.

All in favor?

Aye.

Great. Aye. Changed also. Brings us to item number four, business items. By pedestrian grant application. Julian Skinner, Public Works Director.

Fresh off on 11 p.m. last night.

Is that going to stretch or we're going to have to switch seats? Okay. All right.

I'm going to do some shuffling here.

Hopefully, what I'm looking at on my screen is up on the big screen here. So the item tonight is for you to review and basically give a thumbs up to a project that we're proposing to apply for an active transportation program grant. This is a project that's been in our capital improvement program for some time, but it's not funded. We've done some preliminary work on it. And we have in the past applied for grants, and there's another call for projects coming up. This particular grant requires a review in front of a city or an agency that's proposing the project before one of their boards or commissions that reviews bicycle pedestrian projects. Larkspur does not have a bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee, so... or past practice to bring such bicycle projects to you for your review before grant applications. So this is another version of that. So this project is in our bike and ped master plan. It's derived from an effort that was a multi-agency effort many years ago called the North-South Greenway. that resulted in the construction of several projects in and around Larkspur over the last 10 years. Most recently, there was a bike facility that was added on the east side of the 101 overcrossing of Corto Madero Creek that landed down on Redwood Highway and then extends down to near industrial where there's the pedestrian overcross that goes over the freeway. That was the termination point of what was called the northern segment of the North-South Greenway. And then there's portions of that that continue on north up to the San Rafael. The southern portion of the North-South Greenway was not pursued as the funding that was allocated for that development. It was all used up on completing the northern segment. At the time that work was finishing up on the North-South Greenway, there were discussions about how to continue the pathway south. There was a proposal for constructing a bike facility out on the old railroad berm that's behind, like Trader Joe's and Cost Plus Plaza, and that would connect down to Cordova. That doesn't have direct connectivity to the existing section of the north-south Greenway because there's private property in between. So as part of the project development for that, they were looking at several ways to get easements through private properties to make that work. But there was no funding to continue that project. As those discussions developed, the city concurrently was looking at kind of a more direct connection that would continue the north-south Greenway down on Redwood Highway to Warnham. A different kind of bike facility versus a pathway out on the berm, but still a connection between the north-south Greenway and the pathways that exist in Corte Madera to the south and to the west. And so... Back over 10 years ago, a couple of alternatives were looked at for how to create a facility on Redwood Highway. Which side of the street should it be on? You know, on the one side, you've got freeway ramps. On the other side, you have driveways. So there's a lot of public engagement and meetings over 10 years ago looking at this option while concurrently looking at ways to fund the path behind Trader Joe's, which technically is in both the county and Court of Madera. It's outside of our jurisdiction, but This was a multi-fictional effort, so we were kind of all working together on this. And so when the North-South Greenway ended, we landed on kind of a preliminary design for what the extension of a bike facility on Redwood Highway would look like. Also unfunded, like the potential path out on the railway right-of-way. But because the Redwood Highway facility would be within the city limits, we've added it into our CIP. So we've identified it as a need through that public process. And we've got it in the capital improvement program, but there's no funding assigned to it. And so over the years, we have applied for three previous grants for this project. This is going to be our fourth attempt. This is the active transportation program grant. It's a state grant. that has a couple of different tiers to it as far as the funding that's available. This is, I believe, the eighth or ninth cycle of this grant. We applied for this very project in the last cycle of the grant, and we were very close to the cutoff line for being awarded funds. These grants take a lot of work, a lot of effort to fill out these applications. But in this case, just because we were so close the last time, we figured it was worth the incremental effort to get some feedback on how our grant scored the last time and make some possible changes to our application and make it a little bit stronger and see if we can get funded this time. So we have a consultant, Parametrix, who are working on the grant application. The Transportation Authority of Marin is actually funding the work on that grant application for us. So the only investment for the city at the moment is my staff time in coordinating that effort and getting the grant application in. And the applications are due at the end of June. There's a lot of paperwork. And as I mentioned, one of those will be submitting a copy of the agenda and the minutes from tonight's meeting to show that we reviewed this project with you. and getting your concurrence. So this is a good project to apply for this grant for. So I can go into some project overall details now, unless there's any questions on the process and the grant itself. Okay. This is kind of an overview map. So north on this is pointing towards the right side of the screen. So cutting through the middle here is US 101. So from left to right, You can see where it says Warnham Drive. This is where this project would start. So there's an existing path on Warnham that heads to the west. And then further south, there's an existing path in Corte Madera that heads to the south. And then where you see the dark black lines on this plan is the proposed improvement area. So we're following along Redwood Highway. We're going all the way up to the pedestrian overcross to meet up with where the north-south greenway path ended. But in addition to that, because this is a bicycle and pedestrian grant, we're proposing to continue the project north still on Redwood Highway and install sidewalk on the east side of Redwood Highway. This is the frontage where you have the mobile home parks and some businesses there. So this has been a frequent request in the past from folks in that area to have a sidewalk. So there is a multi-use path on the freeway side of Redwood Highway. but it's mostly used by cyclists. People that are in the residential area walking down to Trader Joe's don't usually cross the street and use that facility. So they have asked in the past for a sidewalk and it meets the parameters of the grant. So we've got it included overall in here. So we're gonna go to the next sheets that are a little bit larger scale. I'm gonna kind of walk through, I'm gonna zoom in here a little bit. This is again down at the Warnham end. So what we're looking at here is from Warnham moving north on Redwood Highway. The proposed improvement will be to install a class four bicycle facility on the east side of the street. So there's a four foot wide sidewalk there right now that runs pretty continuously along the east side. What we would be doing would be reconstructing that sidewalk, making it five feet in width, and then also installing a class four bikeway in between the sidewalk and the vehicle travel lanes on the street. So we would move the curb further out into the street and create kind of like a much wider sidewalk, only there would be a dedicated area for pedestrians and then two-way bicycle traffic. Similar to what you see on Doherty Drive around Redwood High School, where we did that work a while ago, but the pathway would be a little bit wider than that. So it's all separated from the vehicle path by a curb. We would strike crosswalks where it crosses the driveways you see here to the mobile home park. And again, there would be Two different sets of stripes. There would be the regular white stripes for where the sidewalk crosses the driveway. And then there would be green stripes for where the bike facility crosses the driveway. And then as I move north, we come to where the Cost Plus Plaza is and the driveway there. As I mentioned before, there was a lot of conversations early on in this project about which side of Redwood Highway should it be on. It was ultimately decided through that public process that even though this side that we're proposing has a driveway conflict with Trader Joe's parking lot, the conflict on the other side with the Caltrans freeway ramp was going to be more problematic. and involve more red tape and more conversations with Caltrans and potentially project delays. The last thing you want to do when you're applying for a grant is have another agency having jurisdiction over part of your project and be able to impose conditions that may delay your project and not be able to deliver the project in time. The funds that come with these projects have deadlines on them and running into issues with Caltrans, for example, and then deciding that they want to reevaluate how this bike path may impact their off ramps would potentially cause delay that could jeopardize the grant. And so that's one of the reasons why the pathway was chosen to be on the east side, as we have shown here. They are proposing to install a traffic signal at that driveway to mitigate those conflicts. So that is included in the project. The traffic, say one of the primary functions of the traffic signal is to allow the safe crossing of that driveway by the bikes and pedestrians. So it's also eligible for grant funds. So this project includes a new traffic signal at the Trader Joe's Cost Plus driveway that would include the pedestrian crossing indications for both the bikes and the pads on the facility on the east side. And then as we move further north, we get to a couple of more driveways that would receive the same crosswalk treatments and some slight tweaks over at Industrial to make the crosswalk lineup a little bit better. There's some blowups included in the plans of those. We're not reducing any lanes on the street or anything like that. It's mostly just reconfiguration to get everything to work. This intersection here is just before you get to industrial. It kind of shows you a blow up of what that facility would look like if you're working from the street towards the bike facility. You have the southbound lane, you have a left turn lane, and then you have the northbound through lane. You have a curb and then you have a two-foot buffer separating the vehicle traffic from the green here is the bike facility. So it's a two-way bike facility and then behind that you have the sidewalk. That's all the way up to industrial. And then when you get past industrial, we have a multi-use path. We don't have enough right-of-way width to continue with a sidewalk and a bike facility north of Industrials. So we moved to a wider sidewalk for both bikes and pedestrians. It then takes them to Rich Street where they can cross over. And if they're on a bike, they can use the north-south greenway on the west side of Redwood Highway. If they're on foot and they're heading to somewhere further north on Redwood Highway, they can use the new sidewalk that's included in the project on that side and not cross over the street. I'm going to show you next. This is the next sheet that moves further up north that just shows the new sidewalk that's proposed running along the frontage of those properties and then all the crosswalks all the way up to this point right here where as we get close to the City County line, there is a small piece of sidewalk at the very north end of Redwood Highway, so we would connect to that. The next slides here are cross sections. So this is if you were to slice through the street and you were standing on Redwood Highway looking north, what you see here, this is the existing condition. And so you see there's a vehicle travel lane in each direction. There's a median or a turn lane, depending on where you are on the highway. For some sections, there is a bike lane on the street. And so what we're proposing is a class four bike facility, which is separated from the vehicle travel lanes. What's there now is bike lanes on both sides of the street, which is basically There's a stripe, a four-inch white stripe, and cars are on one side of that stripe and bikes are on the other. The bike lanes are not continuous. There's a few gaps. Once you get to the Cost Plus driveway, there's no more bike lane northbound. It is continuous southbound after the freeway on-ramp. And then you see there is the four-foot-wide sidewalk here, and then you have the parking lot or the mobile home park or whatever's there. So that's the existing condition. What we're proposing this project would change is, again, we're looking at those two vehicle lanes with the center turn lane. We would still have a four foot shoulder. It just wouldn't be a dedicated bike lane anymore. But there still would be a four foot wide paved shoulder over there that somebody could ride a bike in if they chose. But the bike lane going northbound would disappear. And within that space, we would have a one, we would move the curb further into the street. We would have about a one and a half foot buffer. And then we would have this 10 foot wide class four, also known as a cycle track, separated from the vehicle lanes. And then we would have the sidewalk immediately behind that. And then Beyond that would be the landscaping for the parking lot. There probably will be some small retaining walls. I think it gets up to 36 inches in height maximum. And that's mainly because as we move the curb out into the street, we start to get some elevation variance with the landscaping and we need to take up some of that. But that's all included. This grant proposal that we're putting in is all inclusive. So we will pay for engineering, you will pay for construction management, and all the construction components you see here, including the new cycle track, the new signal, the retaining wall, things like that. So this is kind of what that facility would look like, again, looking north. And then once we are past industrial and we get to that pinch point and we don't quite have room to do that same configuration, Right now you have the two vehicle lanes. So this is basically in front of the Chevron station. You have a sidewalk and you have two travel lanes. But you see the right-of-way width here. We don't have enough room to do the cycle track and the sidewalk. So the proposal is to widen the sidewalk out to eight feet and it will be a multi-use path. So it will be available for bicycles and pedestrians and we would keep that In this case, a two foot buffer between it and the traveling and there's a six inch vertical curve there. So this is an improvement over the bike lanes that are the same elevation and just separated from vehicles with a stripe. This is all these facilities are all separated from vehicles by a six inch curve. And then the next section to just further north to show you the existing conditions north of rich street where we're planning to at a sidewalk. So right now the public right-of-way extends quite a way into those properties that they're currently using for parking, depending on where you are. This is kind of the bulk of that. And then as you get further north, the right-of-way decreases a little bit. So these are the two existing conditions. And then the proposal here is to fit a new sidewalk in still have room for the parking that's there that's head in parking to where those buildings are. And then I'm going to zoom back out. The next probably should have been the first slides in the presentation, but these are the overview maps that the consultants put together just for context to show the red line is this project, what it proposes to improve. I can zoom in a little bit more here. So you see the yellow line here, this is the old railroad tracks and the potential bike path in the future. They're showing a connection here over to the North South Greenway. But again, this location hasn't been finalized. That's one of the reasons why that project didn't move forward. Because unless you build a new structure over the creek right here to line up with the Central Marin ferry somehow you've got to get from Redwood highway over to this path, but that's the future South connection of the South. North South Greenway and then the red is our improvement so again down from Warner up to rich and then from rich north where it's primarily just sidewalk and then you can see all the green lines here are bike paths and bike connections. The orange line here is the north-south greenway that comes from the Marin ferry connection over the creek. And then as you can see, there's the bike facility on Warnham that goes over and then joins the Sandra Marker Trail. And then there's the pathway in Corte Madera that goes down towards the shopping center. So that's an overview of the project. Again, there's no resolution or anything attached to this. We just need to review the project with you and get your feedback on the merits of the project and your concurrence that you're okay with us applying for this grant for this project.

So that's my overview. I'm available for any questions. Fantastic. Are there any questions from any of the commissioners?

I have a quick question, of course. Um, so not too long ago wasn't this whole area completely under water?

It was, yes, during our super king tide in January. Yes.

Um, as it was brought up in council last night, we're headed for a super El Nino with more rains and flooding expected.

Right.

Is any part of, I mean, I know we can't help that, but can any part of this grant and drainage be part of this or is it too late to add something like that? Because Clearly, we haven't solved sea rise.

Yeah. So for every CIP project we do, we look at sea level rise adaptation, understanding that wasn't sea level rise. That was a king tide, but it's a good forecast of what might happen down the road. So if you're doing something to address sea level rise, you're likely also doing something to address our interim flooding. Um, there's a whole lot of efforts underway, looking at sea level rise, looking at its impacts and what the possible, um, solutions are. Um, you know, uh, uh, as far as the transportation network goes. You could raise the street by four feet and get it out of the sea level rise and, and keep it dry during those big flooding events makes it a little cumbersome to get into the cost plus Plaza when you raise the street up four feet. not to mention a whole bunch of other things. And can you even get here if, you know, in January, the freeway right here was underwater too. So, you know, there's limited things on a project of this size, but you have to take those things into account. I think, you know, we had overtopping of berms from the creek here. So that's certainly, we know where we had some pinch points specifically where water was coming across, but You know, in some of those bigger events, you would need a lot of berms. There's a lot of low areas where the water can get across. I think one of the things we're going to be looking at in the interim is, you know, are there pumping options such that, you know, even if we do get breaches in these areas get inundated that we can get the water out quicker and make them more passable. But, you know, the event we had in January was, you know, three or four consecutive days of water overtopping the creek. So, yeah, it's a concern. It's something we take into consideration with projects that are in flood prone areas. The scale of this project, there's not really much we can do without looking at the area as a whole. I think that, you know, one of the sea level strategies for this area is going to be to protect not just the transportation facilities, but the businesses and the private property, too. And so I think this is more likely and Caltrans is now in the midst of a sea level rise. The Marin County has done a couple of different stages of with the Bay wave of sea level analysis. They're doing a governance study now. given all the different jurisdictions that would be involved in addressing this. So, you know, there's projects that, to be realistic, are probably 25, 30 years out that are going to look at fixing some of these issues. We certainly look at all these projects and see if there's any little interim measures that we can do to help before that. But, yeah, this... If we have another big super king tide like we did in January, this area would be underwater again.

No, I wasn't expecting it. You're good, but I mean, you can't fix that issue. I was just wondering if what you did, if your drainage had to be put in special. And then the other question, you said there's a light that was a stoplight that would be added just to that main driveway, not the secondary driveway. Correct.

Yes.

Thank you.

Great. Are there any other questions from the other commissioners? All right.

Just to follow up on the stoplight.

Yeah.

Traffic light. Is that just one of those little ones for the bikers and the pedestrians?

No, it'll be a full traffic signal. So it'll serve the vehicle traffic too, but it'll also have pedestrian heads for the sidewalk. Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah.

Do you do traffic studies on what I'll do? Yeah.

Yeah. yeah it'll have to be coordinated um you know one of the issues with signals that are that close to the freeway is you don't want to back up traffic onto the freeway uh because then you start getting calls from chp so um but it'll be interconnected uh with the signal that's at industrial so they'll uh work together to meter traffic uh through there great yeah interesting yeah so it could it could be a side benefit for people that already have issues Coming in and out of that parking lot to have a signal there.

My question was, you said you had done, as part of the study, a lot of outreach to the public. I'm curious.

Yes.

Sort of which groups and particularly what cyclists...

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Were you know what they're yeah so not me personally, this was all done during the development of the north, south greenway project, so it was a multi jurisdictional effort. HAB-Masyn Moyer- That was led the county quarter mid era larkspur and the transportation authority of marine all held a series of public workshops over a number of years, this was before. They did the project to construct the piece that's now over the creek that's attached to the bridge. So as a result of all of that outreach, they landed on these separate projects. The one that they have built that goes over the creek was deemed the priority and partly because they could connect to the Central Marin Ferryway and they were working their way south. Unfortunately, that project was very complex with the Caltrans structure and it ended up using all of the money that they had in a pot that they had hoped they were going to be able to get these other projects done too. And so that public outreach and all of these kind of draft plans kind of sat for 10 years after that public process. But that was before I was even at the city, but I have binders full of all of the public engagement and the feedback that they got about this. Yeah. Wow.

So no one would be, I mean, There's always some kind of, but should we get the grant and the work start going?

We'll do another level of outreach just because it's been so long and because we'll be working on, if we get the grant, we'll start working on some of the details. Like we've reviewed this with the Safe Routes to School Task Force. There's not a school directly here, but down at Warnham, there are quite a few school kids that use the Warnham and Redwood intersections. So we've reviewed it. And they had a couple of specific questions about how things would line up and things like that. And so all the outreach that was done back in the planning stage, those were concepts of where the bike facility would go. And it didn't get into a lot of the detail that we're going to need to work out if we move forward with this project. So Once we start getting more level of detail, we'll be doing public outreach, assuming we get the grant. We'll be taking these schematic plans. We'll have a public workshop. We'll get feedback from the community. And then we'll take that feedback, we'll work it into the plan, and then we'll start working on plans to go out to bid. So yeah, there'll be public workshops so that the community has an opportunity to voice anything that they like or don't like about the project and One of the things that has changed since all of the community outreach was done 12 years ago, I guess, is that sidewalk piece that I showed you that extends north on Redwood Highway. That was discussed during all the public outreach way back when, but they didn't think it would fit in the funding plan. So it was never part of the overall concept. And We've had this project included in our capital improvement program, and we've applied for other grants before. And as part of those public meetings we've had for adopting the capital program, when this project has come up, the need for that sidewalk has come up in some of those public meetings. And so that's why we've added it into the grant proposal. So yeah, the project's been discussed at numerous public meetings in the past, and some of the incremental input we've received has led to as adding that sidewalk in this version, which wasn't part of the plan 12 years ago. And there may be some other things that come out when we review it with, you know, the users and the neighbors.

And do you flexibility within the grant to, I mean, yeah, as long as you're meeting the intent.

So usually when you apply for a grant like this, you have what are called schematic plans. where this is what we want to do. You know, we want to do a class floor. We want to have a sidewalk. We want to do this signal. We want to cross here and there. You know, if we land on the slight variations in that, it's still fine by the grant because we meet the need and purpose project. But for example, if we decided we just don't quite have room to put the class floor in after we take all the measurements, we're going to go back and we're going to put class twos in. and widen the sidewalk, that would not meet the intent of the grant and that wouldn't qualify. But if we have to shift things a little bit here and there, and we still aren't going for the class four from one end to the other, those are kind of considered design details that don't require you having to go back and get new permissions from the granting agency. So there's rooms to tweak things here and there. Yeah.

Thank you.

I got a question. So right now, along that stretch of Redwood Highway, there's two lanes of traffic, and then you have two lanes, two bicycle lanes, one going north, one going south. Yes. Through this grant, we would eliminate the southbound bike lane.

Both the north and the southbound bike lane would go away, and they would be replaced with a new Class 4 two-way bike facility, yes.

Okay. Do you envision it being difficult for bicyclists coming from the ferry or from the San Rafael via the tunnel? They're going to come across, get onto the road there, and then they're going to have to cross over to the eastern side and then stay on that side. Do you envision any bicyclists not doing that, going straight on the road and causing traffic? you know, with that, because now they're going to be on the dedicated.

Yeah, they may. And, you know, we experience on Magnolia Avenue, we have a class one bike path and we still see cyclists who prefer to ride with traffic in the street, perfectly legal. And there may be some folks that choose to do that in this case. But what this is providing is a bike facility that has more protection and that is not necessarily for People that bike 20, 30 miles a day, but people that aren't as confident on a bike and they're much preferred to be on a facility that's separated by the curb. One thing we'll be looking at is when we take the class two lanes off, and they're not continuous, there's still gaps in them, but people drive through much like people drive where there's not bike lanes. It's perfectly legal to do so. But we're going to evaluate whether we should put those share arrows on the street too, just so that it's a further indication that bikes can stay on the street if they want to. I think, as you mentioned, it could be more of a concern southbound because if you're coming off the north-south greenway, you're going to be on the freeway side and you may want to keep on that side and not cross over. I think if you're going northbound, depending on where you're coming from, then you probably will go on the class two anyway, because it's right there. It's right next to where the bike lane would have been. But regardless, if you're coming from, say, the ferry and you're coming down on the west side of Redwood Highway, you're going to get to a point where you have to cross a street to keep going. You're either going to have to cross the freeway ramps to keep going south. Or you can cross Redwood north of Rich where there's not much traffic because you're north of the signal at Industrial where everybody turns onto the freeway. So you can cross over Redwood Highway north of where most of the traffic is. And then you're on the side where the bike facility is. And then you just have to cross Industrial. So you have to cross. Your choices are crossing Redwood Highway north of Rich and I get onto the new bike facility and I can keep going south. Or do I stay south and I cross the freeway on ramp at industrial, and then again, I have to cross the freeway off ramp a little bit further south of that. So you have conflict zones either way. And some drivers will have, some riders will have a preference to keep going south and some may choose to cross over and go on the new facility. But we're providing that, we're not taking away Their option, if they prefer, I'm comfortable riding right next to traffic. It saves me 10 seconds if I do that. That's the way I want to go.

But you're creating a separate, safer...

Yes, an alternate path, yes.

And then, out of curiosity, you mentioned earlier how you've gone three different times, was it, prior? Three or four different times? Yep. Why haven't we had any success with that? Is it just a matter of Grant projects out there and there's a lot of competition. Yeah.

Grants are very competitive. So for example, a grant like this, there's different programs to this, but if there's 200 million available for projects, they'll probably get 10 times that in applications. And so, you know, you've got, You know, roughly a 10% and what they, there are certain things they look for in projects. This project actually scored very high. It's just that 90% of the people that applied for it didn't meet the criteria. There's only so much money available. But it's a gap closure. So it scores very high. It's a separated bike facility. So it scores very high as opposed to painting class two. It has a multi-jurisdictional background, and it was a planning effort through the county of Corta Madera and TAM. It checks a lot of the boxes. What we don't get points for that a lot of other projects that do get funded for is we don't have what are called communities of concern in Larkspur. And so a lot of the federal grants, there are portions of the grant funds that are reserved for lower income areas. And projects in Marin never score very high. There's only two recognized communities of concern in the whole of Marin County. One is in Marin City and one is the canal area in San Rafael. If your project doesn't have direct connection to those areas, there's an automatic scoring on the grant that you get a zero for. So it makes it really challenging. Everything else in your project has to score really well to overcome not fitting in that certain criteria. You know, the fact that this pathway has multi-jurisdictional background and connects directly with paths in San Rafael that connect to the Canal District, we feel we have, should be eligible for some points in that category, not as much as if we were a directly serving facility over there, but that's the way we've written the grant application in the past. They're just super challenging. Grants that are statewide, you'll see a lot of the funding goes down to the LA region where they have big congestion relief studies associated with their projects. And then the projects that do come to the Bay Area, a lot of them are in San Francisco, Oakland, and areas where they just have more volumes. And when you do the calculations of how many cars are you taking off the streets, those busier streets and those more densely populated areas are going to score higher. So it's always been a challenge. In the nine cycles of ATP, I think only one project, other than projects in San Rafael, has received funding, and that was the Corte Madera Path that's on Wardham. A few years ago, there was some additional state funds available, and they actually expanded the ATP grant and made it bigger, and they were able to catch some of the projects that fell below what would ordinarily have been the approval line, And Corta Madero's project for Warnham just snuck in under the funding. So other than that, it's been very challenging for marine agencies to get these big grants.

And this project will only go forward if you're able to receive the grant funding. Are there other grants that you could apply to if you're unsuccessful?

We will, again, we always do kind of an assessment of What's the likelihood that we will get the grant and how much effort does it take to put in to apply for the grant? ATPs historically take a lot of effort, a lot of studies to submit the grant application. But fortunately, as I mentioned, the Transportation Authority of Marin agreed to fund this for us. So we're not out of pocket. It's about $60,000 to put one of these grants together in staff time and effort. Um, we've applied for, um, we applied for the previous cycle of ATP. Uh, we've applied for the Bay trail. Technically, um, this corridor is on the Bay trail, so it was eligible for Bay trail funding. So we applied for Bay trail. Um, we didn't score very well on that one partially, probably because it's attached to a street and it's a little bit further away from what traditionally, you know, one would think as a Bay trail. But this project is going to be about $4 million. So, you know, we're not likely to apply for any of the smaller grants because we, you don't want to apply for a grant and then have to give it back because you couldn't get the rest of the funding. So, you know, we're really looking at grants that, you know, have the $3 million and up available. There's not many of them. The federal ones have more red tape attached to them, more requirements. So, ATP is a really good grant to get because it's state and it doesn't have all of the federal reporting requirements attached to it. And fortunately, we don't have to pay for this application. So this is like a really good shot to get funding for this project.

Thank you. Great. Any more questions from the commissioners? Fantastic. So just to clarify, you would like us to have them

motion to I just like yeah, if you could have some concurrence and a thumbs up that you agree that this is a good project for us to apply for the grant for it. Yep. Great.

Is there a motion to this project motion that you that you're willing to do the work we I would make a motion that we go forward with the grant process.

Great. Is there a second to that motion?

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Thank you, director. All right. Thank you.

And we will let you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And all those boys. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Thank you. Right. This brings us to item number five, director's oral report. That's for director.

So very, very quick report tonight. Tomorrow night is the first show in the Music in the Park series. I have some posters over here, so if you have any place that you would like to hang those, maybe your favorite shop, please let me know, and you can take those and put them up. I'm trying to kind of get more of a presence downtown and in the shopping centers with our posters. I want to thank the Larkspur Community Foundation. They've upped their their donation this year to help cover costs. So they're a major sponsor this year and couldn't do it without them. So they'll be out tabling tomorrow night as well as the other nights of the series. I want to thank Gene Friedle and the Wrecking Crew who will be out selling beer, wine, and snacks. And I don't know if we talked about this, t-shirts tomorrow. And we're also making strides this year to be a zero waste event. So we're using all compostable and recyclable materials out there.

No bottled water. No single use bottled water.

Can I ask a question about the park? In the past, the concerts before, there was some discussion about the stage and then there's sort of a dead area. And then kind of people were behind. And it seems like you were talking about adding grass or making some changes. I was just kind of curious as to whether there's going to be any visible changes to the park and the way those concepts are.

Good question. Yes, there is. Yeah, so Julian and Bob at Public Works were able to secure some funding this last fall. And we added a bunch of grass into that. dead area in front of the stage. There's going to be a really nice, well-rooted grass area. I shouldn't say there's going to be. There is grass right in front of the stage, as well as a tree that's just starting to grow. It's been there for a few years, so it's going to provide some shade in the next few years as well. So I think it's going to have a totally different feel, and I'm very excited to see where people choose to sit tomorrow night.

It's going to be a way out in general.

And a new layout in general because of that grass. We're hoping to kind of push everyone closer to the stage. So we'll see what happens tomorrow night, but I feel pretty good about that.

I will say that my friend's band will be playing Thump Nugget. I give them the big thumbs up. Wear your 70s polyester. Yeah.

A second batch of Thump Nugget. This is from our band.

And then I'll also say we have Pizza Squared coming out, which is a local business out of the Bonaire Shopping Center. They're newer Detroit-style pizza, and last year we were kind of missing that food piece, so they stepped up in a big way, and they're going to be out there every night this series. So very excited to have them on board, and it's going to be fun. So hope to see you there. Tell your friends and neighbors. Looking for a leader. Yeah.

And council member Sarah Margo is doing the introduction.

Correct. All right. Any questions for Director Stone? Fantastic. That takes us to item number six, Commissioner's reports. Do any of the commissioners have a report they would like to share?

I just have two things that I want to give a shout out to the Bonaire Center. If you weren't there, you missed out. The community fair on Saturday was phenomenal. I think it was Molly Stone's 40th anniversary. I attended as part of another group I'm involved with, although there were several groups that were present. There was music and Molly Stone was giving away. You could have filled a shopping bag with all sorts of food and tastings and every nonprofit group that you could think of was there. Couldn't get a parking spot anywhere. It was absolutely phenomenal. So huge shout out to Bon Air for really showing up for the community. Huge fair. So great, great community fair and lots of giveaways and announcements about all the stuff that's involved with the community. And I know we have a policy, but I would very much like to see that bike group agendized at some point, however we process that. I know they'd have to create a place in Marksburg to build a bike park, but it'd be great to have them come talk to us officially so we can discuss it with them. Because we can't talk to them.

Do we make a motion to agendize that for a future?

No, I think you let me know that you're interested. I think there's a conversation that needs to happen probably with staff so that we have a little bit of time. We don't have background information.

Whatever your process is, I would like to hear more from them. That's fine.

Yeah. So, I will come back to you. That might be a meeting with me and Julian and then maybe a commissioner from each city comes.

Yeah, I think it's definitely probably more of a joint powers act because someone's got to find a room for it.

Yeah. All right. Are there any other commissioner reports to be shared tonight? Thank you very much. That brings us to item number seven. Let's adjourn the meeting. Is there a motion to adjourn? I'd like to make a motion to adjourn. Is there a second?

I will second that motion.

All those in favor?

Aye.