The Campaign for Sensible Tranportation

RTC actions on December 1, 2011 yield disappointment

At the December 1 meeting, the Commission held a public hearing on Item 20, with the main question being on whether to spend $4 million on continuing the process of widening Highway 1, or to spend that money instead on repairing storm-damaged roads in our county and other needed alternatives to highway-widening.

Commissioners Mark Stone and Ellen Pirie introduced their letter to the Commission, in which they proposed a compromise: That the allocation of the $4 million toward moving forward with the next segment of Highway 1 (Soquel Drive to 41st Avenue) be delayed, and that money spent instead on projects proposed by the Cities and the County. (A copy of their letter is here, and their revised budget is here.) In their letter, they also urged the Commission to support the continued funding of Highway 1 widening “when the next opportunity arises for the RTC to request STIP [State] funding”—expected to occur in two years. More…

Here's a good video, with Peter Calthorpe describing Transit Oriented Development:

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It's best watched in fullscreen mode


“…and we really had to work hard to invent a landscape that would make a local destination a car trip—I mean it took some doing, but we somehow achieved it…”

– Peter Calthorpe

Traffic jams. Lots of cars. Parking problems. Air pollution, neighborhood degradation, global warming.

Nearly 90% of the cars on our streets and roads have only a single occupant.

In California, roughly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation (50% in the Bay Area), mostly from private cars.

Excerpt from the EIR for the 2030 General Plan for the City of Santa Cruz:

Impact 4.4-1: Traffic Impacts on Intersections Levels of Service (LOS). Adoption and implementation of the proposed General Plan 2030 would accommodate future development that would result in increased vehicle trips and traffic, resulting in changes in intersection levels of service to unacceptable levels or further deterioration of intersections currently operating at unacceptable levels of service. With implementation of proposed General Plan 2030 policies and actions, including road improvements identified in an updated Traffic Impact Fee program, intersection operations would be improved and traffic levels would be reduced, except at eight intersections. This is considered a significant impact.

What to do?

We would like to see a more balanced transportation plan for Santa Cruz County than currently exists. For the past several years, our Regional Transportation Commission has specified that top priority for the use of available funds be given to projects that would add lanes to Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, with lower priority given to projects that would enhance other public and private transportation alternatives.

A more balanced approach would include enhancing our bus system, making better use of Santa Cruz County's 32-mile rail corridor, projects for bicycles and pedestrians (including “safe routes to schools”) and projects for seniors and those with disabilities. Such a balanced approach would also help us to address the crucial issue of Greenhouse Gas emissions.

We do recognize the significant advantages of the private automobile, and while we do not advocate adding lanes to Highway 1 (which recent studies have shown to exacerbate Greenhouse Gas emissions), we do advocate other improvements that seem likely to increase mobility in the Highway 1 corridor, such as ramp-metering with bypass lanes on entrance ramps.

As noted in the box at the right, we are proposing a plan. We call it Plan C. It stresses Community needs, Choice, Climate protection and Corridor mobility. Although it might win voter support, it was not favored by the majority of the Transportation Funding Task Force members, and has yet to be seriously considered by our Regional Transportation Commission. The Highway 1 portion of Plan C is similar to the TSM alternative for the HOV Lanes Widening Project (described here), but without the auxiliary lanes.


Widening of Highway 1 is a 1950s-style attempt to solve a 21st century problem. Consider the following:

Do we really want to transform this:

Highway 1

Highway 1 from Rio del Mar overpass

into something that looks like this?

Highway 85

Highway 85 from Winchester Blvd overpass