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Marin group exploring trolley system

PLAN AIMS TO PUT SHUTTLES WITHIN A HALF MILE OF 70% OF URBAN RESIDENTS

MARIN COUNTY – A group of Marin County architects, engineers and public officials believes it knows where to look for a way to ease the county’s congestion woes – the past.

The group, headed by architects Allan Nichol and Michael Rex and supported by Mill Valley Supervisor Charles McGlashan, is urging the county to develop five new trolley lines, many of them along the same right-of-ways used by former passenger trains that linked several Marin cities until the middle of the 20th century.

The group hopes to establish a demonstration trolley line along a four-mile stretch between downtown Mill Valley and the ferry terminal in Sausalito, one of several former routes that linked cities in Marin to each other and to regional railroads.

“It was one of Marin’s big mistakes earlier in the 20th century to rip out the tracks and just devote all that good public transit to cars,” said Mr. McGlashan, who represents southern Marin and serves as a board member for the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District, which is seeking to develop a commuter rail line along the Highway 101 corridor.

The trolley proposal is not affiliated with SMART, but the group hopes to link the smaller train lines it is proposing with the commuter rail in several places. The four other proposed trolley lines would serve cities including Novato, San Rafael, Tiburon, Fairfax, Ross and San Anselmo.

“We’re fortunate that we’ve kept our communities fairly compact and close together,” Mr. Nichol said. “Rail is the way they were developed in the first place. We have a lot of the routes, and we have the density to support this.”

Small shuttle buses, or “jitneys,” would circulate within neighborhoods, transporting riders to the trolley stops.

“We have designed this system so about 70 percent of urban Marin can be within a half mile of a trolley stop,” Mr. Nichol said.

Mr. Nichol estimates that the Sausalito-to-Tiburon route alone would cost $20 million to $50 million to develop, and the group is exploring federal and state funding. He said the costs are justified because of the environmental benefits of removing cars from the road.

“We need to replace the automobile, and I think this is the best way to do it.”

So far, the trolley effort is largely a volunteer project, but the group has the attention of county planners. The latest draft of Marin’s new Countywide Plan, which is expected to be finalized this year, calls on the county to “support the creation of shuttle service, corridor trolleys and/or jitneys to collect riders for public transit.”

Mill Valley planning staff referred to the “potential for a fixed-rail transit, such as a streetcar, in the future” in a report on the city’s Miller Avenue corridor, the site of the proposed demonstration trolley line.

The next step for the trolley proposal is a conceptual engineering and feasibility study, estimated to cost $40,000 to $60,000.

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