Move Forward with Eastern Paradise Drive Improvements - YES

I voted yes to proceed with improvements to the eastern end of Paradise Drive, which has long suffered from intense school time congestion and a lack of adequate bike and pedestrian paths.

While everyone agrees that we need to address the traffic caused by parents queuing in the afternoons to pick up their kids from Marin Country Day School and Marin Montessori School, as well as provide safer bike and pedestrian facilities along the stretch of road, there was a good deal of discussion in the community about how best to do this.

The central question was whether or not to add into the plan a separate queuing lane, to remove queuing from the roadway. Some were in favor of this approach as a practical way of addressing congestion, while others felt it was an excessive concession to the two private schools, whose own policies were causing a problem on public roads.

Ultimately, we decided to go ahead and build the queuing lane, with the understanding that the schools would have to pay the Town a licensing fee to use it for pick-up and drop-off queuing during limited hours. This compromise allowed us to address the congestion issue in the most effective way possible, while ensuring that we weren't allowing private entities to benefit from the unfair use of public property.

Critically, part of this vote was approval of our application for a $2 million grant, which will help fund this important project while relieving some of the burden on local taxpayers.