Nearly all bike infrastructure is planned, designed, and implemented by our local governments. Whether our communities become more bike-friendly or stay the same is largely up to elected leaders and the staff they oversee. Local elections, which can be won or lost by just a few votes, are a critical opportunity to push your city or town in a positive direction.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Marin County Bicycle Coalition cannot endorse candidates for public office, but we are able to conduct questionnaires so that you can arrive at your own conclusion. Below are the 2026 Marin County Board of Supervisors candidates’ responses to our questionnaire on bicycling in Marin. We have made no content changes. We thank the candidates for their time and thoughtful answers.
Candidates’ campaign websites may be accessed by clicking on those with a highlighted name. Those who did not provide a campaign website are not highlighted.
Here are the candidates on the June ballot for the Marin County Board of Supervisors:
CANDIDATE Responded to Questionnaire
- Marc Lewis – District 5
- Andy Podshadley – District 5
- Mary Sackett – District 1
CANDIDATE DID NOT Respond to Questionnaire
- Curtis Aikens – District 5
- Chris Carpiniello (no active website) – District 5
- Mark Gaperin (no active website) – District 1
- Magali Limeta – District 5
Personal Travel
1. Do you ride a bicycle? If so, for what purposes and how often? If you don’t ride regularly, when was the last time you rode a bike (on vacation, for example)?
Marc Lewis: I ride a bicycle periodically, mainly for short local trips, recreation, and to ground-truth how our streets and paths work for a “confident but not fearless” rider. I also make a point of using bikes and transit when I travel in regions with higher bike mode share so I can see how design, operations, and land use interact. I am not a daily bike commuter, but I ride enough to experience the impact of gaps in the network, high vehicle speeds, and unsafe crossings on a typical resident’s willingness to choose biking for everyday trips.
Andy Podshadley: Yes, for fun to enjoy a beautiful day.
Mary Sackett: Yes, regularly for commuting and fun. Usually multiple trips a week. This week I started using the Redwood Bike Share to get to the farmers market and exhibit hall, from the civic center.
Vision for Marin
2. In your own words, describe your vision for the future of transportation for Marin County at large. Concrete examples of things you would like to see changed (or kept the same) are encouraged.
Marc Lewis: My vision is a safe, multimodal transportation system in which driving is an option, not an obligation, for most short trips. Marin already has the right framework on paper: the Countywide Transportation Plan 2050 and Vision Zero commitment to a Safe System, lower-speed streets, and connected active transportation and transit networks. As Supervisor, I would focus on turning these plans into funded project lists, clear timelines, and performance metrics the public can track.
In concrete terms, that means: completing the North–South Greenway and SMART pathway as a low-stress spine from Sausalito through central Marin and eventually to Novato, including major gap closures such as Alto Tunnel; redesigning high-injury corridors for lower design speeds, protected facilities, and safe crossings where warranted; and aligning housing and jobs with these investments so that more people can realistically walk, bike, or take transit for daily trips.
Andy Podshadley: Continued education for young cyclists to learn the rules of the road. Ebike registration with ebike safety brochure. Bike Path maintenance is a must. When paths are maintained cyclists are less likely to have an accident and more likely to use the provided paths. It has been many years since we started the County wide path construction plan. It is nice that many of the paths are nearing completion. However, if new paths are needed they should be built.
Mary Sackett: A complete north south greenway and SMART pathway with more people on bikes and transit. Look forward to SMART pathway from McInnis to Hamilton. As the San Rafael transit center is built I want to ensure that the entire area is walkable and bike able. It’s still really uncomfortable biking through downtown, though the ped light priority has helped a lot.
Vision Zero improvements are top of mind for me. I would love to see Marin at large implement Vision Zero, diminishing the need for crossing guards and improving safety 24 hours a day.
As new development comes to Marin I want to ensure that walk and bike ability and transit are integral to the project from outset.
Safety
Traffic deaths and injuries are on the rise, both nationally and in Marin (this includes all road users, not just bicyclists). The County of Marin has adopted a “Vision Zero” policy, an explicit goal to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on Marin’s roads by 2050. However, some projects that would improve road safety may result in more near-term traffic congestion or less on-street parking.
3. Do you believe prevention of injury and death is the highest priority for Marin’s roads? Or should congestion and delay for drivers be minimized, even where this increases risk for pedestrians and bicyclists? How will you weigh these competing priorities when a project requires tradeoffs?
Marc Lewis: Prevention of death and serious injury should be the highest operational priority on Marin’s road network. The County’s Vision Zero Action Plan and the Countywide Transportation Plan 2050 already commit the County to a Safe System approach, which recognizes that human error will occur and requires us to design for lower crash severity, not just lower crash frequency. That framework is fundamentally incompatible with a status quo in which preserving peak hour Level of Service for vehicles routinely overrides safety interventions for people walking, biking, rolling, and using e bikes.
When a project presents tradeoffs between safety and congestion, my decision rule is straightforward. First, I look at the effect on risk of fatal and serious injury: does the design change lower operating speeds, reduce conflict points, or provide physical separation for vulnerable users on a high injury or high-risk corridor? Second, I look at who bears the harm: modest additional delay for drivers versus continued high exposure to life altering injury for children, seniors, people with disabilities, and riders of both conventional bikes and e bikes. Third, I look at whether congestion impacts can be mitigated with tools like signal retiming, transit priority, access management, or parking reform, rather than by weakening the safety elements.
In practice, this means I will support converting general purpose or parking lanes to protected bikeways or median refuges where the safety case is strong, and I will not support stripping out proven safety measures simply to avoid incremental delay for drivers, particularly on corridors identified in the County’s high collision network. It also means recognizing that e bikes need clear rules and enforcement: for example, Marin’s implementation of new age and helmet requirements for Class 2 and Class 3 e bikes effective July 1, 2025, reflects an appropriate focus on managing higher speed devices in a way that protects youth riders and other path users.
Andy Podshadley: Yes, prevention of injury and death are highest priority. The bicycle path program was to focus on separating pedestrians and bicycles from drivers. This should still be the focus despite congestion and delay to drivers.
Mary Sackett: Vision zero is the top priority, and enhancing safety for pedestrians and bicyclists can decrease car trips and in turn decrease congestion.
Climate Change
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has stated that, even with aggressive adoption of electric cars, Californians need to drive 25% less in 2030 than they did in 2019 to meet the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.
4. What concrete policies and projects in Marin and in the district you hope to represent would improve mobility for people of all ages and abilities while reducing overall driving?
Marc Lewis: CARB’s Scoping Plan is explicit that electrification alone is insufficient: Californians need to drive roughly 25 percent less per capita by 2030 compared to 2019 levels to stay on track for adopted greenhouse gas reduction targets. For Marin, that implies systematic reduction of vehicle miles traveled through shorter trips, mode shift, and higher vehicle occupancy, not just a cleaner vehicle fleet. Transportation is already the majority of local emissions in many Marin jurisdictions, so VMT reduction is a climate, air quality, and public health imperative.
At the county level, I support fully implementing and, where possible, accelerating the safety and active transportation strategies in the Countywide Transportation Plan 2050, with a particular focus on the high-collision network and areas around SMART, major bus corridors, and school clusters. That includes continuous, low-stress bikeway networks rather than one-off projects, as well as a clear program to upgrade crossings and speed management on arterials and collectors. I also support stronger transit priority on key corridors, integrated with land use reforms that allow more housing and neighborhood-serving uses near frequent transit and high-quality active transportation corridors, so that walking, biking, and transit become the default options for many routine trips.
Within the district 5, I would prioritize three concrete policy buckets. First, Safe Routes to Schools: use the Marin County School Access Safety Action Plan and SS4A funding to systematically implement traffic calming, crossings, and bikeways that make walking and biking to school the safe, normal choice, not the exception. Second, first- and last-mile access to SMART and express bus routes: fund and deliver projects that provide direct, low-stress bike and walk connections to stations and major stops, including secure bike parking, lighting, and wayfinding. Third, demand and parking management: use pricing and management of curb and lot parking in congested downtowns and employment centers, along with employer commute programs, to reduce solo driving and support mode shift rather than subsidizing it with underpriced, abundant parking. Collectively, these are measurable tools to reduce VMT while improving access for all ages and abilities
Andy Podshadley: Bicycles have become too expensive for most cyclists. Financial assistance for cyclists that use there bikes for commuting.
Mary Sackett: Redwood Bikeshare, Marin Transit (electrification), bike and ped projects. The most promising is SMART- both the train and the pathways are providing real alternatives to single occupancy vehicle trips.
Alto Tunnel
MCBC’s single biggest priority project in Marin is the reopening and rehabilitation of the Alto Tunnel, which would join together nearly 10 miles of off-street multiuse pathway between Sausalito and Terra Linda, with future expansions to Novato via the SMART pathway.
5. If elected Supervisor, would you support allocating several million dollars in local funding to conduct environmental review and initial design in order to set the project up to receive large state and federal grants, potentially bringing tens of millions of tax dollars back to Marin County?
Marc Lewis: Alto Tunnel is a regionally significant safety and mobility project, not just a local amenity. The County’s structural investigation produced a rehabilitation cost estimate of approximately $46.8 million for the tunnel itself, with total project costs including adjacent pathway improvements estimated around $52.6 million in 2018 dollars, and advocates acknowledge that these estimates will need to be updated for inflation before construction. The same analysis concluded that permanently sealing the tunnel would cost on the order of $8.5 million, which would foreclose a critical segment of a countywide low-stress north–south route and eliminate the possibility of leveraging large external funding sources for this connection.
Reopening Alto Tunnel would close the most significant remaining gap in the North–South Greenway between Mill Valley and Corte Madera and enable nearly 10 miles of largely off-street, ADA-compliant multiuse pathway from Sausalito to Terra Linda, with future extension to Novato via the SMART pathway. By providing a low-gradient, direct connection, it materially improves safety outcomes by shifting bike and pedestrian trips away from steep, indirect routes that currently use higher-speed roadways, and it improves travel times for both bicyclists and pedestrians. From a fiscal perspective, this is exactly the type of high-capital, high-benefit project where local dollars should be focused on environmental clearance, preliminary engineering, and right-of-way so that Marin can compete for state and federal active transportation, safety, and climate funds, rather than attempting to cash-fund construction solely from local sources.
For that reason, as Supervisor, I would support allocating several million dollars in local funding to complete the environmental review and initial design work necessary to make Alto Tunnel competitive for major external grants, accompanied by clear milestones, transparent reporting, and proactive engagement with Mill Valley, Corte Madera, affected neighborhoods, and business stakeholders. My position is that the default should not be to abandon a once-per-generation regional connection without first exhausting reasonable opportunities to leverage outside funding and to design mitigation for construction and operational concerns.
Andy Podshadley: Yes.
Mary Sackett: No, I do not know of a place where several million dollars of local funding are available. My support of this project will be premised on strong support from electeds who represent constituents in Mill Valley.
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