The adoption of a 25-year transportation plan for Marin reinforces the goal of improving the means of getting around our county without a car.

While Marin has long had a reputation for slow growth, the rise in the number of cars using our local roads has not resembled that pace.

With little opportunity for widening local streets and roads, we have two choices — enduring lengthy traffic jams or finding ways of getting to where we want to go without driving a car.

That’s why public transit, safe bicycling and pedestrian improvements remain priorities in the county’s blueprint for investments in enhancing transportation through 2050.

Time will likely bring many changes, requiring the plan to be updated. But keeping a strong focus on these objectives is a sound priority.

It should be more than another plan gathering dust on the local bureaucracy’s bookshelf or hard drive.

The overall goal of the plan is to advance a mission to “advance safe, equitable and sustainable transportation.”

That also means addressing the threat of sea-level rise by investing in protecting low-lying arterials from flooding.

Important projects included in the plan are the raising and widening of Highway 37, improvements to relieve congestion at the Highway 101-Interstate 580 interchange and expanding ferry service and increasing parking at the Larkspur ferry terminal.

County Supervisor Mary Sackett has suggested that Transportation Authority of Marin staff reports on future transportation initiatives include a description on how they fit in with the long-term plan.

Such a routine measure will help keep planners and decision makers from veering too far from TAM’s 2050 roadmap.

It could also help serve as a regular progress report, as well as a milestone raising the need for changes in direction.

TAM routinely has many projects moving forward at the same time. The 2050 blueprint and keeping it in focus should help assess its progress toward meeting those goals.

Its multi-modal goal is not new. TAM’s commitment to a multi-modal approach has helped improve bike paths across the county, support improvements in public transit and has promoted pedestrian safety.

TAM’s board work on the 2050 plan is not completed. It needs to reflect the plan’s goal in a priorities list of capital improvements. That list should be updated annually and will help guide TAM’s budget priorities and pursuit of state, federal and regional grants.

But the completion of the mission document is an important accomplishment, reflecting a countywide commitment to local initiatives and improvements.

Each local jurisdiction has its own priorities, but the countywide plan helps make sure there is practical coordination and cooperative objectives.

That was one of the keystones for forming TAM more than 20 years ago. TAM’s coordinated approach and voter-approved funding — a half-cent countywide sales tax and a $10 vehicle registration fee — has fostered Marin-wide planning and improvements — from widening Highway 101 to improving sidewalks and bike paths.

Unlike its Bay Area-wide bureaucratic big brother, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, TAM has focused on transportation. It steers clear of dictating local development objectives.

The 2050 plan lays out a new set of chapters for TAM and focuses on making it easier and safer to get around Marin.