Staff recommendations contradict city's bike plan Novato City Council Planning Half a Bike Lane

Novato is planning to provide only half of a bike lane on a short segment of long-planned infrastructure, all to preserve a few lightly used parking spaces next to a huge, half-empty parking lot. Please submit a public comment or attend the council meeting on Tuesday, June 24th, to tell them to put people before parking.

The Background

Every year, cities across Marin select a number of streets and roads to repave, which entails grinding down the pavement, laying down smooth asphalt, and refreshing the striping. This is the ideal time to reconfigure streets to close critical gaps in the bikeway network – digging once saves time, money, and headaches for everyone involved. This practice has been affirmed on multiple occasions by city policy.

City Council Resolution No. 107-07
“The City Council of the City of Novato directs its staff to consider the installation of multi-modal transportation elements in each project (emphasis added) in the City of Novato and to implement the installation of those improvements within the framework of its Code, General Plan, and established guidelines.”

City Council Resolution No. 2016-052
Section A.1 – All Projects and Phases. Complete Streets infrastructure sufficient to enable reasonably safe travel along and across the right of way for each category of users shall be incorporated into all planning, funding, design, approval, and implementation processes for any construction, reconstruction, retrofit, maintenance, operations, alteration, or repair of streets (including streets, roads, highways, bridges, and other portions of the transportation system), except that specific infrastructure for a given category of users may be excluded if an exemption is approved via the process set forth in section C.l of this policy. 

Last December, Novato announced the roads it would be rehabilitating, a list that included a short stretch of Grant Avenue between Eighth Street and Seventh Street. This is an important gap in the bikeway network, as it would connect the bike lanes on Virginia Avenue across the new Grant Avenue bridge with the relatively calm downtown segment of Grant Avenue east of Seventh Street. Riders today must take the lane with no dedicated bicycle lanes in either direction. Happily, the Novato Bicycle/Pedestrian Plan, adopted by the Novato City Council in 2023, recommends bike lanes in this segment. 

MCBC Works to Find a Solution

When we first reached out to the Novato Department of Public Works (DPW), the agency responsible for maintaining the city’s roads, we learned that they were planning on restriping the road back exactly as it is now, in direct opposition to the city’s bike plan and the multiple city policies cited above. 

Working with a number of devoted volunteers from Safe Streets Novato, MCBC’s Local Team, and the Novato Complete Streets and Oversight Committee (CSPOC), we pushed the DPW to actually implement the bike lanes as planned. After several rounds of review, the DPW presented a recommendation to the Novato City Council at their April 22nd meeting that would remove the parking on the south side of the street in order to provide bike lanes in both directions. While the parking on the north side of Grant Avenue abuts Marion Park, the south side fronts the nearly 300-spot parking lot for Lucky, CVS, Tagliaferri’s, and Creekside. The DPW’s analysis of this parking showed that it is lightly used. MCBC supported this plan, pointing to it as an excellent example of implementing bikeway improvements efficiently and effectively. 

Unfortunately, when it came to the city council to make a decision, the owners of a number of Grant Avenue businesses, nearly all of them with storefronts located several blocks away, spoke up to oppose removing even a single parking spot. The council punted on the decision, asking the DPW to evaluate removing the left turn lane and retaining as much of the parking as possible. 

A Second Chance?

The DPW brought a revised version of the plan to the May 21 meeting of the city’s Complete Streets and Pathways Oversight Committee (their version of a BPAC). This time, most of the parking was retained, and the left turn lane was removed to free up space for a bike lane in each direction (Option C below). 

We expected this to be the recommendation to the city council. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

Option C, the version staff showed to the Complete Streets and Pathways Oversight Committee in May, removes the center turn lane and a small amount of parking in order to provide bike lanes in both directions

In the staff report for the June 24th City Council meeting, staff are recommending retaining all parking and only installing a bike lane in one direction, with sharrows being the only “infrastructure” for westbound riders (Option A below). This, to say the least, was a very disappointing development and a sad rollback on the staff’s much better recommendations in April. 

The staff report states that some business owners wanted the parking maintained, and others wanted the left turn lane, leaving no choice but to provide only half of the promised bike infrastructure. 

Option A, the staff’s current recommendation, which only provides a bike lane in the westbound direction, contradicts the city’s bike plan

MCBC’s Reaction

We acknowledge that, in the grand scheme of things, this is a small project. It is just 900 feet of road in a city with 144 miles of road. This tiny project should, in a functioning society, be accomplished entirely at the staff level. Instead, it has occupied multiple city council meetings, consumed dozens of hours of staff time, and required a significant amount of volunteer effort. That being said, the project represents a key question for the City of Novato. Can multiple city ordinances and policies, plus a years-long bike plan process, be so easily overridden because a few people don’t want to see a single parking space removed? Is every parking space so sacred that it cannot be removed? 

While marginally better than what is there today, this “splitting the baby” approach makes a mockery of the city’s duly passed policies and the advice of devoted volunteers of the CSPOC. In essence, if we cannot do it here, we cannot do it anywhere. 

How to Make an Impact

eComment
Please take a minute to provide a comment to the Novato City Council telling them to follow their own plan and implement Option C, installing bike lanes in both directions on Grant Avenue. You can do that by clicking here and writing your comment on Item J.3. 

Attending in Person
The meeting will take place at Novato City Hall, 901 Sherman Avenue. The meeting begins at 6 PM, but there are several items before Item J.3, meaning that the Grant Avenue paving discussion will not begin until at least 6:45 or 7 PM. Public comment on the item will take place after the staff presentation and city council questions, but before their comments and decision.

Talking Points
Here are some talking points to use: 

• If you live in Novato, make sure to mention it

• Only Option C aligns with the bicycle/pedestrian plan, the complete streets ordinance, the general plan, and the local road safety plan

• The bike lanes would connect the existing lanes on Virginia Avenue to Downtown Novato, helping people get out of their cars

• The parking that would be removed does not front any commercial properties; it is only adjacent to those with off-street parking.