The San Rafael Transit Center is the regional transit hub for Marin County. It connects bus service, airporter service, taxi, and rail service with transfer points to San Francisco, Contra Costa and Sonoma counties. An extension of the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) station further south to Larkspur bisected the existing transit center site. The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District (Bridge District), with several government agency partners, is leading a project to replace the transit center in a new location in downtown San Rafael.
Through project lead Kimley Horn, a national planning and design engineering consulting firm, Civic Edge led community engagement. In 2018, we hosted two open houses to gather community feedback. We followed up in 2020 with a ridership survey, and two rounds of community meetings to solicit formal comments on the project alternatives as part of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) public comments process.
Engagement included opportunities to build up partnerships between the Bridge District and local community leaders like Canal Alliance, a non-profit that offers legal services, education and career programs, and social services to help Latino immigrants and their families overcome barriers to success. A text message campaign and two events held in Spanish on Facebook Live were organized in partnership with Canal Alliance. Further bilingual outreach included Spanish-English project fact sheets and posters placed at the San Rafael Transit Center and Spanish translation of the DEIR Executive Summary and Notice of Availability (NOA) documents. Our team also led media outreach around the DEIR and NOA.