SamTrans hasn’t addressed Coastside concerns

Is the Mark Simon of Caltrans the Mark Simon who used to write a column about the Peninsula in the San Francisco Chronicle?

Comment 2 by Barry Parr  on  May 31  at  9:45pm  •  All my comments • 

Mark Simon of SamTrans, who used to write a column for the Chronicle.

I agree with these concerns about the buses. I would love to take the bus to my job in Foster City. I would have to go to Hillsdale and catch a ride, bike, etc. and my employer would pick up most of my ticket costs, but the buses run back here to HMB at 4:30 or 6 pm. 4:30 is too early and 6 puts me home at 7 pm. Why no bus at 5 or 5:15?

“…alternative to paving the coast with a tangle of superhighways.”

Who is planning that?

Comment 5 by Jonathan Lundell  on  Jun 01  at  11:09am  •  All my comments • 

Tangle of pavement: the inevitable result of trying to solve traffic/growth problems by building more and bigger roads.

Ms. Chamberlain and Mr. Lundell,

I don’t think anyone wants a huge buildout of roads. However, I think most people are moderate and want something in the middle. The current roads are inadequate for the current needs - both for capacity and emergency access. There needs to be parallel access to all of the communities beside SR1. 92 needs to be 4 lanes all the way to 280 — particularly given all the heavy truck traffic from the quarry and the dump. The state of congestion on that road (even when Devil’s Slide is operational) is outrageously unsafe. The road is hideously inadequate for past needs — much less current or future ones.

That said, I think most Coastsiders would also support capping growth through actually enforced legislation and better long-term buildout of public transit.

There has to be a middle ground. The current roads come nowhere close to meeting the needs of the people who are already here. Close the barn door by all means…but don’t burn it down to boot.

Brian Dantes El Granada

Comment 7 by Jonathan Lundell  on  Jun 01  at  1:37pm  •  All my comments • 

BD, the BoS is on track to approve an LCP update that will more than double the population of the midcoast, and there’s no reason to believe that HMB won’t follow suit (albeit at, perhaps, a slower pace).

We already see Hwy 1 being more of a bottleneck than Hwy 92; if Hwy 92 became a four-lane freeway, how far behind would Hwy 1 be?

Public transit is a mess, largely because public transit funding is a mess. SamTrans and Caltrain are forced to raise fares in the face of declining ridership. I’d call that insane marketing except that neither agency has any real choice in the matter, given their funding mechanisms.

I’m on the fence about the school district’s Parcel Tax (Measure S); if it had allocated $50 for a full busing program, I’d have been an enthusiastic supporter. Such an obvious transit measure (already half paid for by state funds), and still the school board refuses to propose it (and yes, I know there’s a temporary middle school busing program).

Would most Coastsiders support real growth caps? Maybe, but as long as half the coastside is in the county’s jurisdiction, there’s little we can do about it.

I Wholeheartedly agree with everything Brian has stated above. Who has ever discussed performing a huge buildout of roads? Ray

“…an LCP update that will more than double the population of the midcoast.”

double the population? It doesn’t do that. It provides a plan for how to deal with possible growth.

“…if Hwy 92 became a four-lane freeway…”

it is already…in San Mateo, Foster City, & Hayward. I do not see any plans in place to make it four lanes other than from SR1 to Hilltop (less than 1 mile?), so what is this assumption based on?

Neither the BoS or ANYONE is looking for a doubling of population or superhighways. Pure rhetoric.

Mr. Lundell,

I simply don’t buy the argument of hobbling infrastructure needed for current needs based on the premise that it will encourage further growth and a never-ending cycle. In the near term, average families have to endure the existing infrastructure - and major social changes take time. It is simply intractable to get everyone onto mass transit overnight.

I liked much of what your wife, Ms. Chamberlain, had to say at the MCCC meeting in terms of what she’d like to do to protect the Coastside. I’d really like to vote for her - her forthright common-sense approach is refreshing. However, unless she can temper her views to be more realistic regarding short-term infrastructure needs, I will be forced to send my vote to Mr. Gordon.

Ms. Chamberlain indicated her support for other infrastructure needs on the basis of safety, such as the redundant fiber optic links to the Coastside. In my view, traffic mitigation aside, a road parallel to SR1 and widening SR92 fall into that camp.

I sent a letter to Ms. Chamberlain asking for her views. Maybe she could post a letter to the editor here? I would love to have a strong no-nonsense Coastsider on the Board of Supervisors. I hope Ms. Chamberlain can give me and others reason to vote for her.

Also, I somewhat agree with your sentiments regarding Measure S, unfortunately. I will probably vote for it this time despite having voting against all the times in the past. But I would have been much happier had they earmarked funds for busing too.

Brian Dantes El Granada

Comment 11 by Jonathan Lundell  on  Jun 01  at  3:16pm  •  All my comments • 

Ginna: “I do not see any plans in place to make [92] four lanes other than from SR1 to Hilltop (less than 1 mile?), so what is this assumption based on?”

I was replying to Mr Dantes.

Dantes: “92 needs to be 4 lanes all the way to 280”

Go read the proposed LCP update. Its buildout numbers roughly double the midcoast population, and that understates the actual growth, since second units, among others, are inexplicably not counted toward the buildout numbers.

Regardless, a 3% growth rate doubles the population in less than 24 years. If the BoS has ever seriously discussed the limits to coastside growth, I haven’t heard it.

Totally in agreement with Brian D. comment above. I will definitely vote for Ms Chamberlain if she is in alignment with the badly needed infrastructure improvements. Though, I would have to say the redundant fiber-optic links is probably a lower priority improvement.

From reading Jonathan’s comment above I take it you also see the dire need for improving our roadways to support the LCP update. Can we all just create a vision of this?

” If the BoS has ever seriously discussed the limits to coastside growth, I haven’t heard it.” Nor have they discussed doubling population. You infer from the LCP update that the “buildout numbers” double the population. They do not.

Step back into reality, and you see the impossible. That kind of construction is NOT going to happen. Utterly impossible. Market cannot bear it. Assuming 3% average over 24 years does not reflect normal economic cycles and is completely bogus. Next…

Brian Ginna wrote: “You [Jonathan Lundell] infer from the LCP update that the “buildout numbers” double the population. They do not.”

If the buildout targets are not going to be reached as you so confidently predict, then why is CCWD spending millions of dollars in previously accumulated reserves (our money) and raising rates to expand the capacity of the water system to handle the buildout numbers?

The buildout numbers are the official basis for the Supervisor’s plans for needed infrastructure improvements pertaining to roads, water, and sewer in the coming decades. Notice that I left out schools from that list. The Supervisor’s seem to view the lack of capacity of the school infrastructure as somebody else’s problem (our’s).

Comment 15 by Jonathan Lundell  on  Jun 01  at  7:18pm  •  All my comments • 

Brian Ginna says, “You infer from the LCP update that the “buildout numbers” double the population. They do not.”.

The most recent BoS staff report on the LCP update says, “There are 3,719 existing Midcoast residential units, and at buildout, there will be between 6,757 and 7,153 units. Thus, the Midcoast is approximately half built out.”

So yes, I do infer from the LCP update that the buildout numbers double the population.

Some of you have it backwards. First cap the midcoast population with a strict, enduring, enforced, sustainable limit, then provide any necessary infrastructure. The other way around is just flailing at problems without any hope for long-term improvement.

The LCP being pushed by the Supes is a recipe for doubling the population—at least. Probably more, when all the exemptions not counted in the buildout unit numbers of the LCP are considered. And never forget, with growth and development adhered to religiously as the economic engine of “progress,” all buildout figures are merely considered plateaus by those in government setting them. With the prevailing growth ethic, when any plateau is reached, a new higher buildout figure is set.

Without irrevocable upper limits, infrastructure capacity and population are nothing beter than a game, a very expensive and destructive game, of leapfrog. This certainly has been the history of the midcoast, as it is elsewhere in suburban California. The intersections in HMB are much improved over what they were when the slide went out in 82-83. Signals are in where there were formerly only stop signs and they are timed to move more cars. In that outage, there were as many cars clogging up the intersections in HMB as there now are every day when the slide is open! Had there not been population growth in the interim, and had voters not insisted on a CUSD school board that added to traffic delays by ending busing, the current situation with the Caltrans-delayed reopening of the slide to traffic would be bad but not nearly as bad as it is. Some proof of this is seen on Pumpkin Festival weekend when the traffic delays in HMB are only half to two-thirds of what they once were not so many years ago due to improved traffic control.

This is the irrefutable history of every place in California with suburban growth since the end of WWII. Infrastructure and population growth go hand-in-hand. Bigger, rather than wiser, infrastructure simply leads to bigger problems—bigger traffic jams, for one—as long as there is growth.

Suburban growth in America is designed around an assumption it will be serviced by automobiles—residents will travel to get what they want while living in poorly designed, inefficient, unsustainable communities. A big portion of the people currently sitting in cars for hours on end moved to the midcoast when traffic was already bad and the area was already overdrawing some of its vital natural resources needed to sustain the human population. Nobody twisted their arms or put blindfolds on them, yet still they came. This is how it will be until somone gets real about local carrying capacity and gets a grip on rational planning.

With growth, four-lane roads lead to four-lane traffic jams—and calls for six or eight lanes. And we all, not just those profiting from growth and our lowering quality of life, subsidize the bigger messes the developers and their politicians are planning. Without growth, a community might take stock and become more livable. Here this might even be done without road expansion—non-vehicular transportation bikepath/trail parallel to Highway 1, school busing, public transportation designed to take people where they want to go when they want to go there, conversion of some residential areas to job-creating developments (with no greater height limits, lot coverage, and FAR’s), viable village nuclei in El Granada, Moss Beach, and Montara where people could satisfy their basic needs, etc. And the same ideas would serve the midcoast well if the end of cheap oil brings the demise of automobile-dependent suburbia that some predict.

Carl May