I think we’d all agree in principle that we’d all be a lot better off if there were fewer cars on the roads, guzzling gas, polluting, and creating traffic backups. One obvious improvement would be if more people biked—to work, to shopping, etc.

HMB is blessed, thanks to the foresight of some, with one of the best bike trails on the Peninsula—the Coastal Trail—and is in the process of building a new trail along rt. 1. But there are hardly any bike lanes on roads around town. And the worst is rt. 92, which for much of its length from HMB to the reservoir does not even have shoulders. The lack of bike lanes and shoulders certainly discourages bike use for non-recreational purposes here on the Coastside, though there are certainly many who have no other choices and take their lives in their hands every day just to get to work.

I have tried biking to work over the hill (and btw have a recumbent with an electric assist, if anyone’s interested), and it’s a hair-raising experience, made more so by the necessity of commuting in the dark most of the time. Car drivers, and especially truckers, hate my mere presence, and don’t hesitate to let me know it, even though I’m pulled over to the side as far as I can go. But many parts of the existing shoulders have been allowed to crumble away, and other parts look like they were never paved at all, so getting entirely out of the lane is often not an option, an unsafe situation for me, and clearly an irritant to drivers.

I’m not asking for a bike trail over the hill (though that sure would be nice), but what would it take to get the shoulders paved? Not only would this be good for bikes, but it would be much better for cars as well, allowing stalled, broken down, or crashed cars to be pulled to the side so that traffic could continue, instead of our current system which often backs up the whole road until a tow truck can get through.

I know the City has jurisdiction over only part of the road. I guess the County and/or Caltrans has the rest. Shouldn’t a major thoroughfare like this have shoulders? What could we do to get them paved?

The Main & 92 Project does include a Bike Lane all the way to Spanishtown.  The Transportati0n Authority’s Straightening (now called Safety) Project includes a Bike Lane that will run from Spanishtown to the Uphill Passing Lanes. And the Hwy. 35 to Hwy. 280 Project also includes a Bike Lane.  You can find summary information at http://www.smcta.org/streets/TAstreets.asp
The bicycle advocacy groups have been quite effective at the early planning stages.
What you won’t find is schedules. There are significant design and cost challenges still being worked on that make it very difficult to predict when these projects, “Safety” and “35 to 280”, can be put in the funding queue.

Thanks, Mike—helpful as always.

I had actually seen these plans, but except for the Main/92 project, they seem to have existed for quite some time, with no sign of them ever coming to fruition. Have you heard anything hopeful?

There was an agenda item on the September 27 County Planning Commission Agenda that read “Brief overview of Route 92 Shoulder Widening and Curve Correction Project Half Moon Bay to Pilarcitos Creek.”  I didn’t attend the meeting and there’s no link to any report but maybe the Commission’s secretary (650/363-1859, fax
650/363-4849 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) ) has kept a copy of whatever was reported.

As to the SMCTA website, it has several reports that are in obvious need of updating so it’s difficult to know whether any given report is really the latest, or not.  Contacting them directly by telephone is probably your best bet.

Thanks for your reply again Mike maybe our city council should push as hard as they can & stay on the county planning commission’s case to get the road improvements on the agenda started. The longer they wait the more it’s going to cost the taxpayers. And they coastsiders & visitors will be endangered by our pathetic 92.

It would have been the Transportation Authority making a presentation to the County Planning Commission.  The T/A is who’s handling that whole segment.  Pushing them won’t hurt but we need to recognize that they’re working their way through a sizeable pile of challenges.  If you look at the current highway from an overhead view you can see that the more you try to straighten it the more massive the rock and dirt removal becomes and the whole operation parallels a major creek nearby which has at least three smaller tributaries that are crossed by that highway.  How to do all of the blasting, hauling, and detouring without further polluting an already stressed creek is a major planning challenge.  It’ll be interesting to see how they plan to do it.

Since shoulders won’t be happening any time soon, I’ve been looking at alternatives to 92 for bike commuting. Poking around the mountains with Google Earth I noticed that there is an abundance of trails and paths up there, some of them paved. So I started exploring by bike. I went up Frenchman’s Creek up above HMB Orchids, but eventually the paved path is cut off by a fence that says it is FAA property, no trespassing. Then I tried going up El Granada Blvd. There’s an electronic fence cutting off the paved path that says it’s private property, no trespassing.

Does anyone know anything about the mountain paths? Are there any that are accessible, preferably paved, that go over the hill? Or, for that matter, that are just fun to ride on?

There is a fire road, hard clay I guess that runs on the southside of El Granda by the large Eucalyptus forest. I think Santiago Ave connects to it. It actually goes up above El Granada Blvd and you can actually go to the other side of that gate you mentioned.
However it continues on to I don’t know where as I’ve not been beyond that point.
I’ve looked at it on google and can’t totally make out where it can take you, but it looks like a really interesting ride. If you ever explore it, let me know what you find out.

Long ago, I worked with several others on trying to get a decent trail and bikepath system for the entire Peninsula under way. The trail part, which overlapped the bikepath part in many areas, was designed by connecting the three major north-south trails (Bay Trail, Ridge Trail, and Coastal Trail) with a number of east-west trails. When Sweeney Ridge became a part of the GGNRA, the Sweeney Ridge Trail Committee carried on many of the same ideas for the north county by examining trail routes to and across Sweeney Ridge from every direction.

Forget trying to extend the roads up out of Frenchman’s Creek and El Granada over to the bayside. At the spine of the ridge, these bump into S.F. watershed property. That’s all you need to know. There are quite a few roads and trails, some abandoned, in them thar hills, but the public is not going to be allowed on them, let alone build new routes or connectors.

The FAA actually owns only a fairly small patch at the top of Scarper’s Peak (the southernmost peak and the highest point on the ridge of Montara Mountain). This is where there are several communication towers, including a major one for traffic into and out of SFO and the Bay Area. The facility was originally built by a route up from the other side, but that was only temporary, and the FAA built the current road up from Frenchman’s Creek to serve the communication towers. Don’t know about nowadays, but the FAA people in the Hayward office were once quite willing to discuss public use of that road, especially if some entity could be found to help with maintenance (expensive on occasion when storms take bits of the roadbed out). They are probably not the biggest problem. The garbage company (formerly BFI, now Allied Waste??) owns the land around most of the upper part of the FAA road.  There’s a great patch of old growth fir forest on the top of Scarper Peak, the northernmost extent of coniferous forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But fussing with this is moot; it’s watershed east of the top. Lifetimes would be burned away trying to open that up.

Carl May