Heart Walk Great Fun

GO GERONIMO's Safe Routes to Schools program held a Heart Walk Home from School parade on Valentine's Day. The open classroom children created two banners with the help of GO GERONIMO volunteers Jean Kinsey and Terry Davis. These banners, combined with balloons and noise makers helped to create a festive and lively event. About fifty children and adults walked and biked home together heading both east and west. Special recognition should go to Zoila's afterschool kindergarteners, who joined the walk along Meadow Way and then walked all the way back, serving as an inspiration to all of us.

Safe Routes to Schools will be sponsoring a Walk/Bike to School Day on March 21, the first of many to be planned this spring. That same week there will be safety instruction in the school. On April 12, during the School's Health Fair, Safe Routes to School will be offering a Bicycle/Walking Safety Course, we've dubbed "Safetyville". Children will be able to try out their safety skills in a simulated environment.

For more Safe Routes to Schools news see page 3.

Next Registration Date:
The Spring Art Show
San Geronimo Valley Cultural Center
Friday, March 30
6-8 p.m.
Register for GO GERONIMO
Sign up for Ride Sharing
Sign the Think Twice Pledge

GO GERONIMO Teams up with RIDES
GO GERONIMO will be offering a new and improved ride sharing service thanks to a partnership with RIDES for Bay Area Commuters. RIDES offers a sophisticated database of ride opportunities all over the Bay Area. They have set up an exclusive list for GO GERONIMO where people can sign up for long-term ride-sharing opportunities.

When you sign up for the new Skedge, you will be mailed a Match-list of everyone from this end of Marin who are going in the same direction at the same time. We will make this list available to people who live in the San Geronimo Valley, Pt. Reyes/Inverness area, and Fairfax. If you indicate on your registration form that your name be listed with GO GERONIMO exclusively, your list will contain other GO GERONIMO participants only. If you request access to Bay Area wide commuters, your list may contain a combination of both GO GERONIMO participants and non-GO GERONIMO participants. All GO GERONIMO participants are labeled "GG."

RIDES has been using these exclusive lists to help employers establish ridesharing in their companies. This is the first time that Rides has offered this kind of service to a community. RIDES and GO GERONIMO will also team up to recruit participants for the program. You can sign up now by filling out the form on page 5.

Think Twice
By Wendi Kallins

This winter as we watched the Texas oil and energy conglomerates stick it to California, the business community began pressuring legislators to "lighten up" on our "wacky environmental regulations". Indeed, just as the back pages of the paper were filled with news of melting ice-caps and weather disasters, the front pages were telling us that the key to maintaining our SUVs and monster homes is to follow Pennsylvania's example and build global warming coal power plants. Better yet, we can cut down our forests and feed the waste into biomass plants.

It makes me want to get up and scream: "It's the environment, stupid!" The late Donnella Meadows, coauthor of The Limits to Growth, once pointed out that people see environmental, economic and social interests struggling for balance on the playing field. What they don't realize, she said, is that the environment is the field.

Global warming is no longer a theory. Average global surface temperatures increased by about 1.7 degrees Celsius from 1900 to 1998. Seven of the earth's ten warmest years have been recorded since 1990 (Science New, Jan 2, 1999). The incidence of extreme weather events has gone up 28% since 1975 and it is now confirmed that the arctic ice caps are melting, threatening coastal regions with flooding and actually drowning some small islets (Bioscience, October 1998). Atmospheric concentrations of Co2, the main greenhouse gas implicated in global warming, are higher than they've been in 160,000 years, and they're rising.

Lest we bask in our committed environmental awareness, we should take a good look at our own behavior. According to a recent study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, people living in outlying areas like West Marin accumulate the most miles on their cars because of the long distances we must travel to get to work, school and shopping. In a year, a typical North American car will add close to five tons of Co2 into the atmosphere. Cars account for an estimated 15-25 percent of U.S. Co2 emissions.

Air quality has fared no better. Automobiles are the single biggest contributors of air pollution worldwide. While cars today are cleaner than they were in 1970, the increases in the number of cars and miles driven have offset much of that gain. Motor vehicle use is now generally recognized as the source of more air pollution than any other single human activity. Oxides of nitrogen, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide and particulate matters are just a few of the noxious pollutants that spew out of our cars and into our air and water.

Old habits are hard to break, yet we do have choices. Many of us use our cars for in-Valley errands that could just as easily be accomplished by other means. For short distances, it doesn't add much time to your journey. It takes about ten minutes to walk a ¼ mile or to bike a whole mile. Plus it's a great way to get in your day's exercise and take a healthy break from your routine.

GO GERONIMO's Reg card is another useful way to get around without a car. For regular trips to work or school, you can find a partner to share the ride (see page 5 to sign up for ridesharing). Many people drive to Fairfax and then take the bus from there. Errands can be combined into one or two trips a week rather than daily treks over the hill. The trick is to create your own routine.

The problem is that mostof us just don't think about it. GO GERONIMO would like to change that. We'd like to offer you the opportunity to "Think Twice" before you drive. Look for us at the Spring Art Show on March 30 at the Cultural Center. We'll be passing out a pledge form and a magnet to put up on your refrigerator, or better yet, keep it in your car. We're asking you to simply pledge to Reduce your trips, Replace them with alternatives when possible, and to help Reclaim our streets and make them safer by driving considerately. It's a small step to take that can lead to big changes in life-style and maybe even a habitable planet for future generations. If you would like to sign the Think Twice pledge, call 488-8888.

Environmental Facts used in this article are from Divorce Your Car by Katie Alvord

THE WHEEL
Editor: Wendi Kallins
Contributors and Steering Wheel Commitee: Peter Oppenheimer, Anny Owen, Brent Harris, Victoria Holman, Jasper Thelin, and Debbie Hubsmith
Layout: Laurence Brauer, Wordsworth
Printing: County of Marin
Logo: Buck Parle
Cartoons: Jasper Thelin
Funding: Marin County's Congestion Management Agency through the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Fred Gellert Foundation, and in-kind community donations.
Affiliations: Lagunitas School District, San Geronimo Valley Healthy Community Collaborative, and the San Geronimo Valley Cultural Center

Win a New Bike! Play Frequent Rider Miles

Q: What's more fun than biking to school with your friends?
A: Winning prizes for biking to school with your friends.

Frequent Rider Miles has gone through a number of incarnations over the years. This year, we will be offering the contest to all the children of both campuses at Lagunitas School. We've simplified it to make it easy for kids of all ages to play.

The Frequent Rider Miles contest will reward children for doing what comes naturally - getting to school on their own two feet. Every time a child walks or bikes to school they get to cross off a box on their card worth two points. A child who rides the bus or carpools checks the box worth one point. When they have earned twenty points, they turn in their cards for a small prize. Then they get a new card and do it again. At the end of the year there will be a raffle for the grand prize - a brand new bicycle from Specialized, through Mikes Bikes. Any child that bikes or walks daily has numerous chances to win.

There are those who already bike or walk as part of their daily routine and they know that this activity has it's own reward. For those who have yet to feel that joy, the Frequent Rider Miles contest provides encouragement to try.. In the end the rewards of cleaner air, less traffic and a healthier lifestyle benefits us all.

Cross Walks at School Children's Path

The new crosswalks across the French Ranch access roads have been installed and the improvements to the School Children's Path will be completed this spring.

The Marin County Department of Parks and Open Space and the French Ranch Partners will finish grading the popular path which many Lagunitas School district students use to walk or ride their bikes to school. GO GERONIMO volunteers will assist in this effort. To volunteer call Brent Harris at 488-1433.

Crossing Guards Needed

rossing guards for the Lagunitas School. It's fun. It's rewarding. And it only takes forty minutes a day. Helping children cross the street is about as easy as it gets. Everyone waves and thanks you. The kids thank you. Most important, the drivers cooperate.

We would like to offer the same service in the afternoon, but we need three more people to volunteer before we can start. We could also use the back-up people in the morning. This could also be a paid job for someone who would be willing to do it every day. The pay comes to about $300 a month for one and a half hours a day. Until the paid position is filled, GO GERONIMO will continue to recruit and schedule volunteers. If you can spare one afternoon a week between 2:50 and 3:30, then give us a call at 488-4101

Parent Surveys Reveal Safety Concerns
Our surveys tell us that anywhere from 54 to 80% of students at Lagunitas School arrive by car while only 3-5% walk on a regular basis, and another 9% bicycle. The good news is that about 27% come by bus and 10% carpool. It is also encouraging to note that another 25% walk or bike occasionally. By spring we hope to turn those who walk or bike occasionally into regulars.

There are many reasons why parents choose to drive their children to school, the most important one being the safety of Sir Francis Drake, followed by concerns about San Geronimo Valley Drive. Not surprisingly, parents would love to see more separated paths (46%), safer crossing conditions (32%), and slower traffic on Drake (44%). They also are willing to let their children walk with other adults (55%) or children (38%).

Overall, Lagunitas School District has an excellent opportunity to reduce traffic and give kids a healthier lifestyle through improved pathways, better safety skills, and more organized walking and biking to school. Let's work together to improve these numbers and set a great example for other communities.

Recorded by Anny Owen

This is a conversation with the Lagunitas Middle School Video Transportation Productio class. The questions were posed and answered by students in grades 5 through 8. The class is guided by Chris Davis, Safe Routes Instructor and Anny Owen, instructor for Middle School P.E. and Music as well as Steering Wheel committee member for GO GERONIMO.

Students are: Graham Meese, Marie Moore, Thomas Crosse, Colin Jordan, Katherine Fazackerley, Nate Farey, Hobie Owen, John Young, Tom O'Mahoney, Greg Fisher, Katie Calhoun, and Phillip Deschamps-Sorensen

TC: What is the point of this class?

GM: The point of this class is to promote biking as an alternate mode of transportation.

TC: The movies that we make, show that biking is fun…exercising while getting to places you want to go.

CJ: Do you feel that there is a possible chance that biking will become a widely used mode of transportation in the community?

HO: I'd say it kind of already has and will increase more and more as oil starts to deplete.

KF: I don't think it'll ever again be as widely used as cars but I think it probably will increase to more and more use.

NF: I think it will. Once people notice that it's a faster way they will start using it to get to work and stuff.

GF: I think that in some places biking will increase but where it's turning into more city-like places it will decrease because of overpopulation…more development, more roads for cars.

TC: I think that biking will get more popular in the Valley because most of the peole in the Valley want to save the environment and it'll expand because people in the Valley will tell others people and it will expand like that.

MM: A lot of people in the Valley work in San Rafael and in San Francisco so I don't think people will start riding bikes to San Francisco and besides it's too cold.

KC: I disagree because I think people are going to be riding bikes more to work. I think that if they have to drive a long way and don't want to ride so far, they will drive halfway and ride the rest of the way.

JY: Sometimes the cold helps you wake up in the morning.

GF: Do you think bike riding is a danger to the environment?

TO: It's not as bad as cars are. It's better to ride your bike than drive a car.

KE: I think if you stay on the paths there's no way you can harm the environment because bikes don't have motors or anything that would pollute the environment and I agree that cars are bad for the environment. Bikes aren't bad for the environment but sometimes if you go off the trail, the dirt can slide down onto the road. When it rains it washes away a lot more dirt than when a biker rides through a puddle and down hills after it has rained. Biking on paths that people have made is kind of a compromise because to pave those paths, that in itself is a harm to the environment.

CJ: My Zappy bike has a motor but it's electric so it doesn't pollute.

PD: I think horses do a lot more damage than the bikes during the rain. In Woodacre, there's a trail and when bikes ride on it there's just a thin line and horses churn up the ground.

HO: Probably the best source of energy we can use is solar power but it's not perfectly reliable because of the clouds.

GF: They store it up in power cells.

TC: I think that biking does pollute, sort of, because some people just don't respect nature and don't care if it gets polluted and are irresponsible so they dig up trails from random places and build jumps and stuff.

This class of young, inquisitive, energetic builders-of-the-future, doesn't always agree but they do have a lot on their minds. Together, in a beautiful, friendly way, they come up with questions and answers dealing with the agreed-upon congestion and pollution problems of our community. Keep your eyes and ears open for an opportunity to watch their attempts to change our lifestyle through exciting homemade videos!

Inkwells Bridge Construction This Summer
By Brent Harris

A new bridge for cyclists, equestrians, and hikers will be constructed over the San Geronimo Creek at The Inkwells this August if project planning stays on schedule. The new bridge will allow users to bypass the narrow winding section of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard through Samuel Taylor Park by crossing over the creek to the existing bike path. It will also create a critical link between the trail systems on both sides of the creek.

The new bridge will cross the creek about fifteen feet upstream of the existing MMWD water pipe and will support two new water pipes underneath the walkway. The existing pipe and its supporting columns will be removed.

The Marin County Department of Parks and Open Space are handling project planning. The engineering and construction management are in the hands of MMWD.

Watch The Wheel for progress reports on this vital bikeways and trail link. For more information contact Brent Harris, the Community Representative for the project, at 415-488-1433.

Are you a GO GERONIMO Registered Rider or Driver?

If so, then we need you to answer a few questions below.
It will only take a few minutes and will save us having to call you.
Please fill this out even if the answer to both questions is no.
Registration #__________
a) Drivers Only: In the last year, have you picked up another member of the Reg at a roadside stop? ___Yes ___No If yes, please go on. If No, skip to next question
1. If yes, how many times have you given someone a ride?______
2. Where were the pick-up and drop-off points? ________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
b) Drivers and Riders: Have used your laminate to get a ride through the Reg in the past year?
___Yes ___No If Yes, please go on.
1. How many rides have you received?_______
2. Where were the pick up and drop off points of your typical trip? ______________

_____________________________________________________________________
Please send this form in to: GO GERONIMO, P.O. Box 304, San Geronimo, CA 94963.
Or drop it off at the Cultural Center in the Healthy Community Collaborative office