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shannon_aFor twenty years, people have been fighting to get bicycle and pedestrian access to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. And, it should have been an easy sell, because there was one lane on each level of the bridge that wasn't been used (except for breakdowns). But, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission fought against it because they wanted to maintain the ability to jam more cars onto the Bridge, and Marin fought it because ... well, a vocal group in Marin is overentitled and overprivileged, and doesn't want to provide access to their community.
And, that access was needed. I mean, there's almost no way to get across the Bay using bike power. If you go North, you have to go past San Francisco Bay, past San Pablo Bay, out to the edge of the Carquinez Straits before you can cross on the Carquinez Bridge, and then once you get into the north Bay, biking access is terrible, so you have to go about 10 miles more north to get to bikable roads. In the south Bay, the southernmost Bridge, the Dumbarton Bridge, is bikable, but I've never done it because it's a low, ugly Bridge, and I remember commuting across it every day when I worked at Sun, and our trucks were constantly buffeted by the wind, to the point where I can barely imagine biking across it and living.
Maybe the Bay Bridge will someday have bike access across it, but that's at least a decade off, so the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge was people's great hope. And it opened to bicycles and pedestrians (but mostly bicycles) today.
The story of bicycle and pedestrian access to the bridge is entirely one of advocacy. It wouldn't have happened, no way no how, without Bike East Bay and others. Even so, they fought for six years after it looked like they had a foothold. And both Marin and the MTC are continuing to fight now. The MTC tried to turn it into a non-rush-hour-only bike path about halfway through the process, and the Marinites are still trying to get the four-year pilot program canceled.
I'm not convinced it's going to survive long-term, especially since it's never going to be a major bike commute. It's just too long. At 5.5 miles, it was the first or second longest bridge in the world (depending on how you count it) when it was built. And that's ignoring the fact that the east side is way out at Point Richmond and the west side is miles from downtown San Rafael. But for a pleasure ride, and for access to Marin for a weekend day. It's magnificent.
I purposefully went a little late, because I didn't want to hang around the ribbon-cutting ceremont at 10, nor did I want to have to fight with huge crowds on the bridge. So I meandered out, had lunch at my favorite Oscar's replacement in Point Richmond, then got to the Bridge around 1pm.
The whole time I was heading toward the Bridge from Point Richmond, I saw people coming back, many talking about how great the ride was. The numbers increased as I approached the Bridge, and though it was never crowded, I really felt a part of this community of bicyclists, and it was a great feeling. Pretty soon I had a broad smile on my face whenever anyone went by. I might admit to getting a little emotionally choked up too.
And they were right, the ride was great. It was really foggy as I approached the Bridge, but pretty soon I ascended above it. And since the bike trail is on the upper deck, I could really see everything. It was like I was out on the ocean, with a sea of clouds, and mountains rising all around me. It was like being on Avalon. And unlike the Dumbarton (and the Bay Bridge for that matter) it wasn't particularly windy. Instead, it was just a magnificent ride, up above the whole world, with the beauty of nature all around, and smiling people occasionally going by.
I was a bit worried about the difficulty of the ride because the roads up to the Bridge always looked long and steep to me. But the ride from Richmond proved to be quite doable, with the only gotcha being that the Bridge is made up of two cantilevered sections, with a big dip between them.
And, as it turns out, I can't speak about the approach from San Rafael. People certainly did look more winded coming from that direction, and the drop into San Rafael felt long and steep (but I couldn't even see what it looked like, because I descended into the fog, and pretty soon couldn't see much of anything).
So yay for a bike ride I thought I'd never take, because the March 2019 opening kept getting push back to back, to the point where we were only about 45 days from our planned departure on today, when it opened.
The downside of the Bridge is, of course, that it comes down in San Rafael. I'd say the ugly part of San Rafael, but I haven't actually seen the attractive part yet, if there is one. But you have a mess of highways and very busy roads, and San Quentin Prison, and a lot of unattractive industrial areas.
I meandered further into San Rafael, wanting to check out the bike paths along the new SMART train line, and found those pretty unattractive too, pretty much just a fenced path running alongside railway tracks. (It'll be nicer in 50 years when SMART fails, and it turns into a full greenway.) And then I ended up dumped from the path into a more commercial area, and there were huge masses of cars on big streets everywhere.
That's where a lady started screaming at me to get in a bike lane like everyone else. Obviously, she was at a pretty low level of moral development, since her basis for doing things was "what everyone else did". But what really confused me was that there was no bike lane. "What bike lane?" I said. "There's no bike lane." But she just kept screaming about how everyone else was using the bike lane that wasn't there, and I should too. I finally decided that she'd fulfilled her lifelong dream of moving to Marin County, but it turned out to be shitty San Rafael.
(Maybe the northern half of San Rafael is prettier. If so, this woman, who seemed very displeased with life, doesn't live there.)
I thought about continuing through that icky commercial area, because I saw more off-street bike lanes further north, and suspected they were more SMART-adjacent lines, but then I remembered a long-time dream I'd had: doing a mighty bike ride from RIchmond BART to San Francisco, across two Bridges — and truly showing the power of the new Richmond-San Rafael bike path, which opens up both peninsulas to bicyclists from the East Bay.
I looked it up on my trusty iPhone and was told I could make it in 2 hours and 1 minute, which would put me in the Tenderloin just as twilight descended. I decided to go for it. (It ended up taking me about an hour longer, getting into Civic Center BART around 6pm, so I actually got to see the Tenderloin in full dark: "Why did everything suddenly get so sketchy?" I would ask, as I biked along Polk, and then I realized where I was.)
I've done the north part of that ride before, through the super-cool CalPark Hill Tunnel, which gets you out of ugly San Rafael and into beautiful Larkspur. They were still building up the connectors south last time I was there (after taking the scant one bus out to San Rafael), but they're all done now, so you get to bike over to the attractive Corte Madira Creek and southward for quite a while before really having to worry about roads.
Though 101 is a constant presence as you head south, the bike paths are nice and the rest of the scenery is beautiful, with hills often surrounding you on two or three sides and waterways frequently snaking in from the Bay. I continued on into Corte Madira proper, then around a nice hillside road, and into Mill Valley. That's perhaps the most gorgeous area I biked through, with all the water and hills interfacing so nicely. And also it's where the start of the Mill Valley - Sausalito Bikeway is: another entirely off-road trail that took me a few miles further south.
I skirted Sausalito, and remembered fondly the Anniversary that Kimberly and I spent there some years ago, even stopping to take a picture at the building where we failed to have our Anniversary dinner (because the place we'd thought we'd made reservations at had gone out of business). And then exiting Sausalito I started to climb again, as I approached the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The closer I got to the Golden Gate, the more fog I saw, blocking out more of San Francisco and much of Bridge #2. And when I got onto the Golden Gate Bridge again it was even foggier than the first: this time I was right in the fog.
And that was another amazing experience. I often could see no more than 10 or 20 feet ahead, so it was like I was in my own little world. It was actually wet! When I took the sharp turn around the southern tower (slow! I did it slowly!), I almost wiped out because of the slick surface. But I could make out the towers as I approached them, and every once in a while bicyclists would materialize from the fog.
Eventually, I made it to San Francisco, tired not just from the ride, but also from the effort of watching so carefully in the fog.
The fog cleared as I descended down from the Bridge, and from there it was the same route I took during Fleet Week, with the exception of a stop at Ghirardelli Square for some chocolate (of course). Sadly, they no longer had Kimberly's favorite: malted milkballs.
And then it was a tiring ride up Polk, a quick turn through the Tenderloin, and perfect BART karma when I hit the platform.
Yes, we have problems at home. Yes, there is stress from the move, and yes Kimberly is getting (much) more than her fair share of stress from not just cancer, but also a doctor who hasn't gotten his pathology of the same out to anyone in a full week.
But that was a perfect ride that I've dreamed of for years, a great day of exercise, a great day of natural beauty, and a bit of destressing for myself before diving back into the scrum.
And, that access was needed. I mean, there's almost no way to get across the Bay using bike power. If you go North, you have to go past San Francisco Bay, past San Pablo Bay, out to the edge of the Carquinez Straits before you can cross on the Carquinez Bridge, and then once you get into the north Bay, biking access is terrible, so you have to go about 10 miles more north to get to bikable roads. In the south Bay, the southernmost Bridge, the Dumbarton Bridge, is bikable, but I've never done it because it's a low, ugly Bridge, and I remember commuting across it every day when I worked at Sun, and our trucks were constantly buffeted by the wind, to the point where I can barely imagine biking across it and living.
Maybe the Bay Bridge will someday have bike access across it, but that's at least a decade off, so the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge was people's great hope. And it opened to bicycles and pedestrians (but mostly bicycles) today.
The story of bicycle and pedestrian access to the bridge is entirely one of advocacy. It wouldn't have happened, no way no how, without Bike East Bay and others. Even so, they fought for six years after it looked like they had a foothold. And both Marin and the MTC are continuing to fight now. The MTC tried to turn it into a non-rush-hour-only bike path about halfway through the process, and the Marinites are still trying to get the four-year pilot program canceled.
I'm not convinced it's going to survive long-term, especially since it's never going to be a major bike commute. It's just too long. At 5.5 miles, it was the first or second longest bridge in the world (depending on how you count it) when it was built. And that's ignoring the fact that the east side is way out at Point Richmond and the west side is miles from downtown San Rafael. But for a pleasure ride, and for access to Marin for a weekend day. It's magnificent.
I purposefully went a little late, because I didn't want to hang around the ribbon-cutting ceremont at 10, nor did I want to have to fight with huge crowds on the bridge. So I meandered out, had lunch at my favorite Oscar's replacement in Point Richmond, then got to the Bridge around 1pm.
The whole time I was heading toward the Bridge from Point Richmond, I saw people coming back, many talking about how great the ride was. The numbers increased as I approached the Bridge, and though it was never crowded, I really felt a part of this community of bicyclists, and it was a great feeling. Pretty soon I had a broad smile on my face whenever anyone went by. I might admit to getting a little emotionally choked up too.
And they were right, the ride was great. It was really foggy as I approached the Bridge, but pretty soon I ascended above it. And since the bike trail is on the upper deck, I could really see everything. It was like I was out on the ocean, with a sea of clouds, and mountains rising all around me. It was like being on Avalon. And unlike the Dumbarton (and the Bay Bridge for that matter) it wasn't particularly windy. Instead, it was just a magnificent ride, up above the whole world, with the beauty of nature all around, and smiling people occasionally going by.
I was a bit worried about the difficulty of the ride because the roads up to the Bridge always looked long and steep to me. But the ride from Richmond proved to be quite doable, with the only gotcha being that the Bridge is made up of two cantilevered sections, with a big dip between them.
And, as it turns out, I can't speak about the approach from San Rafael. People certainly did look more winded coming from that direction, and the drop into San Rafael felt long and steep (but I couldn't even see what it looked like, because I descended into the fog, and pretty soon couldn't see much of anything).
So yay for a bike ride I thought I'd never take, because the March 2019 opening kept getting push back to back, to the point where we were only about 45 days from our planned departure on today, when it opened.
The downside of the Bridge is, of course, that it comes down in San Rafael. I'd say the ugly part of San Rafael, but I haven't actually seen the attractive part yet, if there is one. But you have a mess of highways and very busy roads, and San Quentin Prison, and a lot of unattractive industrial areas.
I meandered further into San Rafael, wanting to check out the bike paths along the new SMART train line, and found those pretty unattractive too, pretty much just a fenced path running alongside railway tracks. (It'll be nicer in 50 years when SMART fails, and it turns into a full greenway.) And then I ended up dumped from the path into a more commercial area, and there were huge masses of cars on big streets everywhere.
That's where a lady started screaming at me to get in a bike lane like everyone else. Obviously, she was at a pretty low level of moral development, since her basis for doing things was "what everyone else did". But what really confused me was that there was no bike lane. "What bike lane?" I said. "There's no bike lane." But she just kept screaming about how everyone else was using the bike lane that wasn't there, and I should too. I finally decided that she'd fulfilled her lifelong dream of moving to Marin County, but it turned out to be shitty San Rafael.
(Maybe the northern half of San Rafael is prettier. If so, this woman, who seemed very displeased with life, doesn't live there.)
I thought about continuing through that icky commercial area, because I saw more off-street bike lanes further north, and suspected they were more SMART-adjacent lines, but then I remembered a long-time dream I'd had: doing a mighty bike ride from RIchmond BART to San Francisco, across two Bridges — and truly showing the power of the new Richmond-San Rafael bike path, which opens up both peninsulas to bicyclists from the East Bay.
I looked it up on my trusty iPhone and was told I could make it in 2 hours and 1 minute, which would put me in the Tenderloin just as twilight descended. I decided to go for it. (It ended up taking me about an hour longer, getting into Civic Center BART around 6pm, so I actually got to see the Tenderloin in full dark: "Why did everything suddenly get so sketchy?" I would ask, as I biked along Polk, and then I realized where I was.)
I've done the north part of that ride before, through the super-cool CalPark Hill Tunnel, which gets you out of ugly San Rafael and into beautiful Larkspur. They were still building up the connectors south last time I was there (after taking the scant one bus out to San Rafael), but they're all done now, so you get to bike over to the attractive Corte Madira Creek and southward for quite a while before really having to worry about roads.
Though 101 is a constant presence as you head south, the bike paths are nice and the rest of the scenery is beautiful, with hills often surrounding you on two or three sides and waterways frequently snaking in from the Bay. I continued on into Corte Madira proper, then around a nice hillside road, and into Mill Valley. That's perhaps the most gorgeous area I biked through, with all the water and hills interfacing so nicely. And also it's where the start of the Mill Valley - Sausalito Bikeway is: another entirely off-road trail that took me a few miles further south.
I skirted Sausalito, and remembered fondly the Anniversary that Kimberly and I spent there some years ago, even stopping to take a picture at the building where we failed to have our Anniversary dinner (because the place we'd thought we'd made reservations at had gone out of business). And then exiting Sausalito I started to climb again, as I approached the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The closer I got to the Golden Gate, the more fog I saw, blocking out more of San Francisco and much of Bridge #2. And when I got onto the Golden Gate Bridge again it was even foggier than the first: this time I was right in the fog.
And that was another amazing experience. I often could see no more than 10 or 20 feet ahead, so it was like I was in my own little world. It was actually wet! When I took the sharp turn around the southern tower (slow! I did it slowly!), I almost wiped out because of the slick surface. But I could make out the towers as I approached them, and every once in a while bicyclists would materialize from the fog.
Eventually, I made it to San Francisco, tired not just from the ride, but also from the effort of watching so carefully in the fog.
The fog cleared as I descended down from the Bridge, and from there it was the same route I took during Fleet Week, with the exception of a stop at Ghirardelli Square for some chocolate (of course). Sadly, they no longer had Kimberly's favorite: malted milkballs.
And then it was a tiring ride up Polk, a quick turn through the Tenderloin, and perfect BART karma when I hit the platform.
Yes, we have problems at home. Yes, there is stress from the move, and yes Kimberly is getting (much) more than her fair share of stress from not just cancer, but also a doctor who hasn't gotten his pathology of the same out to anyone in a full week.
But that was a perfect ride that I've dreamed of for years, a great day of exercise, a great day of natural beauty, and a bit of destressing for myself before diving back into the scrum.