Sierra Club – Marin Group
Tam Junction Team c/o Gordon Bennett
June 19, 2002
Re:
Revised Draft Negative Declaration Previous SCH#2001022020
Shanazi Precise Development Plan, 156 Shoreline, Mill Valley; AP 052-371-03
Dear Ms. Giudice:
The Sierra Club – Marin
Group believes the above Draft Negative Declaration (Neg Dec) is inadequate
in that it does not account for recent and significant developments in the
immediate area, namely the acquisition of the Felton property for near-term
use as an expansion of the existing Manzanita Park-and-Ride facility and
for intermediate-term term use as a new “visitor intercept facility” of as
many as 400 cars for a Muir Woods shuttle. In contrast,
page 28 of the Neg Dec notes: “the Felton property at 101 Shoreline Highway
(proposal for an office complex).”
There is a significant
difference between an office complex and a visitor intercept facility. The Muir Woods shuttle will necessarily run on a reservation
basis, with the 400 cars cycling through as many
as four times per day. This could mean as many as
1600 visitor cars cycling through Tam Junction on high visitor days. Preliminary Muir Woods visitor studies show about half
of its visitors originate from San Francisco, many of whom may decide to
gas up before returning. Gas station traffic resulting
from the proposed visitor intercept facility will be very much higher than
that from employee cars of an office complex. Therefore
mitigation F1 (page 29), the “fair share fee” to be paid by the developer
is based on much too low a number.
Even if the fair share
mitigation fee were corrected to reflect a visitor intercept facility, the
physical mitigations for gas station traffic impacts are inadequate. The proposed exit/merge lane (F2 and F3. page 30) is
the same as at Mill Valley’s East Blithedale / Ashford Avenue intersection. It does not work well at the Blithedale location and it
will work even less well at the Tam Junction location. The Blithedale location
stacks up at the Ashford stop sign as the front car hesitates to cross the
oncoming traffic, or stacks up even further as drivers unfamiliar with the
east bound merge lane wait for an opening in traffic going both ways. At least, the Blithedale location offers both a long merge
with east bound traffic for drivers who make it across and alternate routes
to access East Blithedale for drivers who give up waiting.
On the other hand, the
Tam Junction gas station will have a larger number of visitor cars less familiar
with the proposed exit/merge lane, and no alternate route to get onto Shoreline
in the inevitable stack up. Furthermore, the vast
number of those cars exiting east successfully will want to head to San Francisco,
and thus will be faced with a short distance to cross over two lanes. We do not doubt that based on the (incorrect) assumption
of a Felton office complex and a hypothetical traffic calculation, mitigations
F2 and F3 might seem to work. In the real world,
however, the proposed mitigations will create a traffic nightmare in Tam
Junction, already a difficult traffic location. We
urge that you require any project here, particularly a gas station, must
have safe and effective east turn solutions demonstrated to have worked in
the real world.
Sincerely,
Gordon Bennett, Conservation
Co-Chair cc: Tam Valley Gateway Coalition
Tam Junction Team c/o Gordon Bennett
June 24, 2002
Marin County Community Development Agency
Attn: Ms. Alicia Giudice
Addendum to Sierra Club letter of June 19, 2002
Re: Revised Draft Negative Declaration Previous SCH#2001022020
Shanazi
Precise Development Plan, 156 Shoreline, Mill Valley;
AP 052-371-03
Dear Ms. Giudice:
The Sierra Club – Marin Group
wishes to make explicit what was implicit in our letter of June 19, 2002:
The Club believes that the above Draft Negative Declaration does not
contain adequate and correct information or mitigations sufficient to insure
that the traffic impacts have been mitigated to less then significant effect. Thus the Club does not agree with the proposal for a negative
declaration conclusion from the Initial Study for the above gas station project.
Due to the intensity of traffic through the Tam Junction area, and the changing circumstances brought about by the several on-going planning efforts underway (TTIP, CMPT), the Club specifically requests that a focused EIR on traffic impacts be undertaken to insure that all relevant information is incorporated into planning for the proposed gas station.
Sincerely,
Gordon Bennett, Conservation Co-Chair