The 3rd Street and Hetherton Street intersection is a critical element of the main travel corridor through which most Point San Pedro Road (PSPR) Peninsula residents’ access Downtown San Rafael and designations further west of the City. It also is the intersection in which most PSPR residents travel through to access the Highway 101 southbound freeway entrance. The intersection is also adjacent to the City’s Bettini Transit Center.
During the past four years, there have been a number of accidents at the 3rd and Hetherton intersection involving vehicles and pedestrians. In two instances, the pedestrians were hit by a vehicle and killed. Because of this situation, the City has over the past several years been studying ways to improve pedestrian safety at that intersection. The challenge is to do it in such a way that does not significantly impact traffic flow.
The City hired consultant Kimley–Horn to study the issue and to develop intersection concepts that would provide improvements to both vehicle travel and pedestrian safety. These concepts were presented to several community organizations for their review and comment including the Coalition’s Traffic Management Subcommittee on January 17, 2018. Members of that group had some major concerns about the proposals presented and their impact on traffic congestion. City staff listened to the comments and said they would review them with their consultant and would get back to the Subcommittee with any changes before the City would move forward on this project.
City staff never came back to the Roadway Committee with updates or changes to the concepts. Instead the City Public Works Department presented a report to the City Council at their July 2, 2018 meeting  with findings and recommendations on how they were proposing to proceed with changes to the intersection. (see the City Council Staff Report). Despite concerns raised by representatives of the Coalition and other community groups, the City Council accepted the staff report.   Â
The proposed changes would involve removing the left turn only lane on 3rd Street at Hetherton, shortening the distance of the southern pedestrian crosswalk, providing pedestrians a five second lead crossing time and upgrades to the traffic signals and signage at the intersection.
The Coalition is supportive of improving the pedestrian safety in the 3rd and Hetherton intersection, but any changes made to accomplish this goal must not significantly delay vehicular traffic making left turns on to Hetherton or traveling westbound through the intersection. The Coalition believes that the proposal by the City will result in delays to vehicles in the area much longer that the two to three seconds claimed by City staff and their consultant.
Alternatively, representatives of the Coalition presented these suggestions to the Council for their consideration:
- Changes should be implemented incrementally with the left turn only lane maintained while using the 5 second pedestrian head-start accommodation.
- A good first step would be to implement the proposed change for a trial period of six months. A permanent solution should be delayed until the location of the new San Rafael Bettini Transit Center is identified.
- Before the start of this trial period, the City needs to clearly define a set of measurable criteria to determine whether the trial is successful. At the end of the trial period, the Department of Public Works should prepare a report on the results of the trial and submit it to the public and the City Council for review.
- Once the SMART extension to Larkspur commences, the City needs analyze the impacts of related traffic congestion on the 3rd and Hetherton intersection when trains cross 2nd and 3rd Streets.
- Before the start of the trail period, The City needs to have a backup plan that they can quickly implement if it turns out that the trial program is creating significant traffic delays.
After the July 2, 2018 City Council meeting, there was strong concern expressed by Point San Pedro Road Peninsula residents. Two of the City Council Members who live in our area, Andrew McCullough and Maribeth Bushey agreed to speak with the City’s Public Works Director about the concerns raised.
The Public Works Director informed the Chair of Roadway Committee that the City was moving ahead with the project which included having a consultant complete design plans and seek the necessary approvals from Caltrans which has jurisdiction over streets and roads under and adjacent to the freeway.
He did say that that would using an incremental approach implementing parts of the plan in phases, with the removal of the far-left turn lane being the final phase. An analysis would be done after each phase to determine whether the next phase is necessary. San Rafael Mayor Gary Phillips, who attended the Coalition’s Annual Community Meeting on November 10, 2018, heard enough concerns from the residents attending the meeting that he promised to examine the Council’s support for moving forward with the plan.