INTRODUCTION

The Devil’s Slide road closure has underlined what every Coastsider (and many visitors) learned long ago: the Hwy. 92/Main St./Hwy. 1 Bottleneck is an inadequate roadway nexus, funneling commuter, school, commercial and visitor traffic into the same congestion.  There is little doubt that the only lasting solution is to offer drivers a navigational choice around the Bottleneck.  Future traffic volumes will obviously dwarf present-day levels. The earlier plans for Foothill/Bayview, customized to our long-term needs, appear to have the potential to relieve the overburdened Bottleneck for decades to come.  It is CCF’s understanding that no other bypass routes have been seriously considered by the City.

As envisioned in this outline, Foothill/Bayview would be a two-lane route about one mile long, with paved shoulders and pedestrian/bicycle pathways on both sides.  Beginning at Highway 1, it would wind through the Beachwood and Ailanto properties, continue behind the high school, and join Highway 92 at the new Community Park.  The termini would be either stoplights or underpasses.  Construction costs could be equitably shared between planned development owners and the public.

 POTENTIAL BENEFITS

Nine traffic circulation and access issues related to the Bottleneck could be improved by Foothill/Bayview.  These will first be listed, then briefly described:

1. Weekday Commuter Traffic
2. Weekend Visitor Traffic
3. High School Traffic
4. The New Community Park 
5. Ailanto Subdivision
6. Beachwood Subdivision
7. Main St./Downtown Businesses
8. The Boys’ & Girls’ Club
9. Hwy. 92/Main St. Improvement Project

1. Weekday Commuter Traffic   Coastside commuter traffic through the Bottleneck has been at critical mass for years.  The Devil’s Slide road closure is only taking Coastsiders’ weekday Highway 92 commute from very bad to almost unbearable.  On any normal weekday – Slide closed or not – the morning commute from southbound 1 onto eastbound 92, and especially the afternoon return commute from westbound 92 to northbound 1, can slow to a crawl.  Foothill/Bayview, with nonstop dedicated right-hand turn lanes at both westbound 92 and northbound 1, would divert more than half the returning afternoon commuters from the Bottleneck. Underpasses could allow the same nonstop morning transition from southbound 1 onto eastbound 92.  Foothill/Bayview would undoubtedly save all commuters a great deal of gasoline, air pollution, wasted time, and spent emotions.

2. Weekend Visitor Traffic   The central guiding principle of the Coastal Act is to facilitate public access to our shoreline.  But in fact, the Bottleneck for many years has unnecessarily restricted the ability of our visitors, especially on weekend afternoons, to enjoy the oceanshore that Coastside residents benefit from daily as a way of life.  We should ensure that visitors do not spend as much time sitting in traffic on westbound 92 as they do at the beach, or patronizing our businesses.

3. High School Traffic   It is an understatement to say that the high school, which also doubles as our designated emergency center in the event of a disaster, has a poorly designed vehicular access plan.  Yet if Lewis Foster Drive were extended the short way east to Foothill, then students, parents and school staff could enter and exit school grounds from two opposite directions.  This would greatly alleviate morning and afternoon traffic snarls on both Highway 1 and Main Street, while improving the high school’s effectiveness as a disaster relief center. 

4. The New Community Park   The new Community Park’s ‘Preferred Alternative’ offers a plainly dangerous, congestion-inducing roadway and traffic plan.  With no access from westbound 92, park users arriving from that direction (when not tempted to make a left or ‘U’ turn from 92) would need to make a difficult left-hand turn at 92 and Main Street, then another left onto Stone Pine Road.  The roadway would run lengthwise through the park’s middle, dividing an already small park into two segments.  This would waste valuable space while requiring park users to cross traffic in order to access different park areas.  As currently planned, it would not be possible for pedestrians or cyclists north of 92 to access the park, without crossing 92 at Main, then traveling along narrow sections of Stone Pine that have neither shoulders nor sidewalks.

            Foothill Boulevard would neatly solve all of these problems.  Parkgoers could access the Community Park from both directions on 92.  Instead of clumsily dividing the park, Foothill would trace a compact quarter-circle through its northwest corner, then connect smoothly to Stone Pine.  This configuration would protect the ESHA in that corner, while maximizing usable park space.  Vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians could safely access the park from the north, by taking Foothill across 92.

5. Ailanto Subdivision   Agreeing with the City, the Coastal Commission approved the Ailanto project in 2001 on the condition that “Permanent access to the site shall be provided by the construction of either Bayview Drive or Foothill Boulevard.”  The City and Coastal Commission have since reversed themselves, signing the 2004 Settlement Agreement that now grants the subdivision sole, permanent access through Terrace Avenue.  This is an untenable scenario that would worsen traffic problems, with or without a stoplight.  Foothill and Bayview, meeting at the Ailanto property, could provide its residents equidistant access to both Highways 92 and 1, instead of channeling traffic from a few dozen new homes into the Bottleneck.  The intersection of Bayview Drive with Highway 1 would benefit all of the Half Moon Bay neighborhoods in that vicinity (Highland Park, Grandview, Casa del Mar), by allowing safe left-hand turns onto Highway 1.

6. Beachwood Subdivision   Beachwood is another project long mired in the courts, that could provide the land for Bayview Drive.  Rather than defend against a $30,000,000 lawsuit in federal court, the City should consider seeking a settlement with the developer that preserves wetlands while permitting a tasteful housing development accessible to Highways 92 and 1 via Foothill/Bayview.  Beachwood’s intersection with Highway 1 would be more intermediate between the lights at Frenchman’s Creek and Main Street than a stoplight at Terrace Avenue.  As the Coastal Commission determined, “Better intersection spacing will be accomplished through the provision of Bayview Drive, located 2,000 feet to the north of Terrace, as the consolidated signalized intersection north of North Main Street.”

7. Main St./Downtown Businesses   Visitors are physically deterred from patronizing Main Street businesses by the sheer difficulty of downtown access from westbound 92.  Drivers, like most objects in motion, generally follow the path of least resistance, and taking a left off of 92 onto Main during peak hours is never easy.  In order to increase downtown business, the City needs to provide alternative Main Street access off of westbound 92.  Foothill would accomplish this by its convenient connection to Stone Pine Road, allowing drivers to pass Stone Pine Center on their way to Main Street.

8. The Boys’ & Girls’ Club   The Boys’ & Girls’ Club has its best chance of being built on the site next to the Lutheran Church.  Safe access to and from that site, for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, would be vastly improved by a stoplight or underpass at the adjacent intersection of Bayview Drive and Highway 1.  Not only could Club users safely turn left onto northbound 1, all the children living in the neighborhoods east of 1 could then safely cross the highway.  As a public safety issue, it would appear that a controlled Highway 1 intersection near the Boys’ & Girls’ Club is an indispensable element of the project’s completion, a need that Bayview Drive would fulfill.

9. Hwy. 92/Main St. Improvement Project   The current Highway 92/Main Street Improvement Project is fully complementary to Foothill Boulevard; integrated together, the two projects would deliver the maximum congestion-relief benefit.  92/Main’s easternmost improvements are planned to end only a stone’s throw from a Foothill intersection. It is not surprising that previous City engineering studies rightly saw the Foothill and 92/Main improvements as connecting parts of the same roadway project.

 CONCLUSION

Half Moon Bay has the opportunity to simultaneously address a number of long-term traffic issues affecting the entire Coastside, through the frank acknowledgment that drivers must be given an alternative to entering the Bottleneck.  Foothill/Bayview appears to be that alternative – and the only one.   Like all larger projects in our community, it would have many obstacles to overcome.  But finding alternatives to the overburdened Bottleneck is not just about relieving traffic congestion and its resulting pollution, it is about improving public safety and coastal access.  And because our community has established strict growth rate limits, we can now improve our infrastructure as necessary without having to accept unwanted growth.  That can make projects like Foothill/Bayview a ‘Win-Win’ for everyone.