Issues regarding the Highway 1 Corridor

Introduction

In Santa Cruz County, Highway 1 is the primary north-south highway, running from the Monterey County line at the Pajaro River bridge (milepost 0) to the San Mateo County line north of Waddell Creek (milepost 37.45).

Between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, Highway 1 is essentially a four-lane freeway, and is an object of controversy and concern. The most heavily traveled section of the road has been operating at capacity during peak hours since the late 1980s. Some feel that the resulting traffic congestion mandates widening the road to six or eight lanes, a strategy that is sure to fail, in that such a strategy will not relieve traffic congestion on the road. (For details see this page.)

Adding lanes to Highway 1 will not only increase traffic congestion (particularly on other streets and roads), but will also exacerbate global warming. In addition, such a strategy does little to enhance our mobility. It wastes precious resources that could otherwise be used to improve public transit and other transportation modes.

Nevertheless, the majority of our Regional Transportation Commission has made the widening of Highway 1 its top priority for the expenditure of our scarce resources. The result is that there are now three Highway 1 widening projects that are currently in various stages of completion (or not, as the case may be). We summarize those three projects in the following paragraphs.

Descriptions of Highway 1 Widening Projects

• The Route 1/17 Merge Lanes Project: This is the project for which basic construction was completed in November 2008, extending from the Pasatiempo interchange on Highway 17 to the La Fonda overcrossing on Highway 1. Although this section of the route includes the Fishhook, nothing at all was done to the Fishhook. Furthermore, even Caltrans admits that this project will do nothing to relieve traffic congestion; it is billed as primarily a safety improvement project. The landscaping for this project was delayed until its funding was finally released in October 2009. It has now been installed.
  “Merge Lanes” puts it mildly: It is a project to widen (except for the Fishhook itself) this section of Highway 1. It was approved by our Regional Transportation Commission in 1998, and finally gained the needed funding in 2006.
  As originally proposed in 1987, the project would have replaced the existing Fishhook with a three-level flyover. However, there was much objection, led primarily by the Fishhook Neighbors. Caltrans then presented a number of lower-cost options, which eventually resulted in the current project. At that time, the estimated cost was $33.4 million, a number that subsequently increased significantly.
• The second Highway 1 widening project is called the Soquel/Morrissey Auxiliary Lanes Project. This project, which will widen the highway between the Morrissey Boulevard and Soquel Drive interchanges, forms a 0.98-mile piece of the nearly nine mile, eight lane HOV Lanes Widening Project (see below). It should rightfully be included in that larger project, especially since it builds in the eight lane capacity at the La Fonda bridge overcrossing with a near doubling of the road cut at that point and the removal of all the adjacent vegetation. For this reason, and because it does not improve the confusing interchanges at Morrissey Boulevard and Soquel Drive, and because it provides only minor improvements that would provide for pedestrians and bicyclists, we strongly opposed (and still oppose) its separate construction.
  Therefore we (along with many others) submitted detailed comments and questions relating to our concerns on Caltrans' Environmental Document.
  Those comments along with the responses to them may be viewed by clicking on the above link—see especially our comment letters 8 and 9 and accompanying responses. (The Environmental Document is a 78 megabyte pdf, so it will take a while to download.)
  The responses by Caltrans are unsatisfactory. It became clear that Caltrans' intention was to avoid any serious consideration of alternatives to highway widening by its strategy of piecemealing the longer HOV Lane Widening Project into smaller projects, a strategy known as “segmentation”. Such segmentation constitutes a flagrant violation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it precludes consideration of alternatives in the larger project and because it avoids analysis of the cumulative impacts of each smaller project.
  Since we had no further opportunity to influence the actions of project proponents, and since Caltrans faced no further block to beginning construction, we decided to file a lawsuit challenging this project, which we did in October, 2009, in Superior Court in Sacramento. We were advised that we had a strong case, and anticipated that we had a reasonable chance to receive a judgement in our favor.
  Unfortunately, after a very lengthy and costly process of assembling the record and preparing our case, Judge Marlette, in March of 2011, ruled in favor of Caltrans.
  We then carefully considered whether to appeal Judge Marlette's ruling, but in view of both our limited resources and the possibility that if we lost the appeal a bad legal precedent could be the result, we decided not to appeal the ruling. Instead we resolved to focus our attention more on the educational and political fronts.
  The Soquel/Morrissey Auxiliary Lanes Project, having acquired the requisite funding, will now proceed, with the replacement of the La Fonda bridge currently scheduled to begin early in 2012. All the trees and shrubs—on both sides of the highway—will be removed, and replaced by walls of concrete. The length of the bridge will be doubled, in order to accommodate the anticipated doubling of the freeway's width.
  
  At the right is an image of La Fonda Bridge as it currently appears. All those trees and shrubs will be removed. The new bridge will be twice as long as this one, with walls of concrete at each end.
  This project, at a cost of some $22 million, will not relieve traffic congestion, but simply move the bottleneck a mile down the road. These funds could have been put to much better use, like repairing local roads, or improving the rail corridor.
• The third Highway 1 widening project is called the Highway 1 High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes Widening Project. This is what was originally “Phase 2” of the Highway 1 Widening Project. It would widen Highway 1 all the way from Morrissey Boulevard to Larkin Valley Road by adding a full HOV (carpool) lane in each direction, in addition to auxiliary lanes for this distance. Thus Highway 1 would be doubled in width, widening it to eight lanes from the current four for the entire distance—nearly nine miles. (The “Soquel-to-Morrissey Auxiliary Lanes Project” is a one-mile segment of the HOV Lanes Widening Project.)
  Environmental analysis of this project is currently ongoing; our Regional Transportation Commission (SCCRTC) has already allocated the funding—over $12 Million of our scarce resources—for this analysis. The cost of this project's construction, originally estimated at approximately $300 Million, was to have been provided by an increase of the County's sales tax—half a cent over 30 years—an amount that was the principal part of Measure “J”. This measure was soundly defeated in November 2004 by the voters. It gained the support of a mere 43 percent of the voters—far less than the required 67 percent. (The Campaign for Sensible Transportation, through its work on the “NO on J” campaign, helped to defeat this measure.)
  Recently, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), in its response to the submission of the Draft Environmental Document for the Highway 1 HOV Lanes Widening Project, refused to sign on to the document, owing to the current fact that funding for the project's construction is not “reasonably available”.
  However, following a lengthy discussion involving representatives from Caltrans, the FHWA and the RTC staff, a strategy for (apparently legally) piece-mealing (or “segmenting”) the HOV Widening Project was arrived at. This strategy involves “tiering” the project, including its environmental analysis.
  “Tier I” involves a consideration and environmental analysis of the complete nine-mile corridor. “Tier II” involves a focus on a segment of the complete project—the one-mile segment from Soquel Drive to 41st Avenue—to consider construction-level details and demonstrate its “operational independence”. A staff report provided by the RTC that summarizes the pros and cons of “tiering” may be found here.
  This new strategy would increase the cost for Highway 1 widening. The Regional Transportation Commissioners are currently considering whether or not to pursue the “tiering” strategy for Highway 1 widening projects. If pursued, available state funds would be allocated for highway widening projects, instead of for projects more favored by the public, such as repairing local streets and roads, improving the rail corridor and planning for its use, and providing amenities for bicycles and pedestrians—all of which would reduce the need for traveling using the automobile.