Corte Madera team advances Lower Christmas Tree Hill evacuation plan, eyes limited undergrounding and parking controls

Corte Madera Town staff and consultants presented conceptual designs Wednesday for Lower Christmas Tree Hill aimed at improving evacuation egress, roadway capacity and utility reliability while keeping most on‑street parking available.

The presentation summarized prior outreach and traffic analysis, outlined targeted roadway widenings and a limited PG&E undergrounding district, and proposed an administrative “fire‑weather restricted” parking program to keep critical travel lanes clear during a small number of high‑risk days each year.

The plan matters because most of Lower Christmas Tree Hill relies on a single primary exit — Redwood Avenue to Corte Madera Avenue — and the project team’s analysis shows that, in a worst‑case evacuation, queues and delays could be long without changes. The town framed the work as one element of a broader climate adaptation and wildfire mitigation effort driven by a prior climate adaptation assessment and community input.

Town staff and consultants laid out technical goals and tradeoffs early in the meeting. RJ Sukko, Corte Madera’s director of public works, said the town’s earlier climate assessment and a Rule 20 undergrounding study focused the effort on the funnel point where Redwood meets Corte Madera Avenue. Sukko noted the cost of a broader undergrounding effort: “that component alone, that limit alone is is roughly $1,100,000.”

Consultants described the regulatory and design baseline. Becky (BKF, consultant) said the team used the California Fire Code as the guiding standard and that the code’s minimum unobstructed width for fire apparatus roads is 20 feet. The project team and Central Marin Fire District agreed to a relaxed 16‑foot standard for some low‑traffic local streets (Crescent Road, Portola Way and parts of Morningside Drive) where only residents would typically drive.

Traffic analysis presented by Ryan (Parametrics) estimated that current peak congestion on Redwood results in an average 35‑second delay and about a 20‑foot…