BLOG: Been Down This Road Before
25 May, 2010
Jonathan Rowe
The first time I drove through Novato I thought that I had let my attention wander and taken a wrong turn. As you enter town from West Marin, Novato Boulevard seems almost as wide as a freeway. It is supposed to be Northern California but it feels more like L.A.
Then you pass the diner on the left and somehow the scene changes. The road narrows to two lanes. There is the welcome shade of trees, and a sense that the occupants of the houses might not be subscribers to Better Homes and Gardens.
You are back in small town America, circa 1949 — a stretch of a half-mile or so that progress somehow missed. Then you cross Diablo Boulevard at the stoplight and it is L.A. again. Two malls in the next half mile, and oceans of parking that remind you what rules the roost around here.
With auto-centricity on both sides I’ve wondered how long the quirky center could hold. Not very, it now appears. According to the Marin Independent Journal, the Novato city council has decided to eliminate the two lane stretch. It will demolish the houses, cut the trees, and widen the road to four lanes; and it will do all this for the “efficiency” of traffic flow.
Don’t people ever learn? About half a mile to the east is Highway 101, which was built to ensure an efficient flow of traffic north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Have you driven 101 at rush hour lately? Widen it and they will come, and make it clogged again.
Perhaps a mile back from the stretch in question is San Marin Drive. It is four lanes plus parking, with strip mall of course, and a model of efficiency by the standards of the typical traffic engineer. So much so that speeding has become a chronic problem. Not long ago a motorcyclist crashed into a father and daughter, killed the latter and left the father maimed. Residents are desperate for ways to slow the traffic down.
That’s what the two-lane stretch on Novato Boulevard does. It “calms” the traffic in the term of the trade. The planned widening would “take down the quality of our community and take down beautiful trees,” one resident told the IJ. “I like the idea of slower traffic. It’s fine by me.”
Novato has been down this road before, so to speak. For years it permitted strip malls to proliferate around town until its main street – Grant Avenue – dried up. Then it had to spend millions to spiff up Grant Ave and try to bring people back. Now it wants to speed up the traffic on Novato Boulevard with the probable result that it will have to slow it down again.
What’s the old saying about making the same mistake over and over and expecting somehow to get a different result?
Categories: Blog, Placemaking
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