Measure X Pushes Bridgeway Past Its Limits

The City’s 2020 traffic study modeled no Marinship housing and approximately 428,000 square feet of new Marinship commercial development through 2040.

Since then, nearly 1,000 homes have been authorized through Sausalito’s Housing Element. The City’s independent review warns that housing traffic alone could push one or more signalized Bridgeway intersections below the City’s acceptable standard.

Measure X would permit approximately 11.7 million square feet of total floor-area capacity across the Industrial and Waterfront zones. That is the zoning ceiling, not a prediction that every parcel will be built to the maximum.

The independent reviewers identified just twelve likely redevelopment parcels where Measure X would permit approximately 1.8 million square feet of gross development. They could not calculate how much of that would be net new construction because existing building-area data were unavailable.

Even these likely redevelopment sites received no traffic analysis.

Using the City traffic study’s zone-by-zone trip counts, we calculated the evening-peak traffic that 1.8 million square feet could generate. Depending on the mix of uses, the result ranges from approximately 1,000 trips with today’s industrial pattern to approximately 2,400 trips with downtown-waterfront-type activity. A half-industrial, half-commercial mix produces approximately 1,700 trips.

These are our calculations, not a City forecast. They show the scale of the question Measure X leaves unanswered.

At Marinship Way, the City’s study found that the existing left-turn pocket was already too short, with waiting cars backing into a through lane. At Harbor Drive, the study projected that the turn pocket would overflow by 2040, “potentially resulting in safety-related impacts.”

Those projections did not include the housing authorized afterward—or any traffic from Measure X.