Although there has been no formal proposal to build the Foothill Bypass yet, the California Coastal Commission is already making it clear that the environmental challenge may be too great to overcome.

Chris Kern, Coastal Program Manager for the North Central Coast District, has written a strongly-worded letter to Half Moon Bay City Manager Debra Auker, writing in response to an article in the June 6 issue of the County Times. Click the link below for the full text of the letter, but the key paragraph is:

John [sic] Gardner is quoted in the article as stating: “You could route a two-lane bypass through and around those wetlands and then come up with a mitigation plan that would be embraced by the Coastal Commission.”  This is incorrect.  In accordance with the foregoing discussion, we would not support construction of a new roadway through wetlands because that would be prohibited under the Coastal Act and the City’s LCP.

Mike Ferreira says that the $150 million estimate attributed to him in the County Times article is for the four-lane version of the bypass from Young Avenue to Main Street: "Charlie’s estimate of $40 million for the two underpass version is probably low-end-accurate assuming minimal specifications."

Monday night, the Big Wave project, which links homes for developmentally disabled adults with commercial office space, took an important step in what looks like a long and difficult path.  The project aims to build on twenty acres of land next to the Half Moon Bay Airport, Pillar Point Marsh, and Pillar Ridge mobile home community [Google map].

Officially, this was a "Pre-application Workshop" that is required by ordinance for all "major developments" in San Mateo County. The intent of such workshops is to gather input from the public early on, before an application is actually submitted, to hear the public’s concerns, so that these concerns may be formally addressed later on during the project review by County staff. The County staff will publish a summary of the comments made at tonight’s meeting and will attempt to provide some sort of response to questions asked

It was billed by David Byers, land-use attorney for the Big Wave project, as the “first time in any sense this project has been unveiled to the community”.

Though this was the first such meeting dedicated to  showcasing Big Wave, the project has been presented before during public meetings of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and of the Half Moon Bay City Council, among others. Its proponents came out in force for the county’s hearings on its Local Coastal Program.

The proposed project would be located on two separate parcels located near the Pillar Ridge Manufactured Home Community, just north of Princeton, off Airport Road. The northern of the two parcels is zoned M-1 (Marine, Light Industrial) and M-1, AO  (Marine, Light Industrial in the Airport Overlay zone). The southern of the two parcels is zoned W (Waterfront Industrial).

Neither zoning designation provides for residential use. The project proposes to include 18 small single-story homes (1200 sq. ft., 2 bedroom, 2 bath) and 18 1-bedroom apartments. According to the applicant, the 18 small homes would be initially sold at cost to members of the developmentally-disabled community. From a planning perspective, the residential portion of the project constitutes a new housing subdivision.
 
The commercial portion of the project includes an office park consisting of four two-story office buildings, and associated parking lots, that were described by the applicant’s architect as having a "box-type, warehouse design."

The warehouse/office space would be sold as condos, where part of the ongoing condo association dues from the "for-profit" office park would help pay the operating expenses of the "non-profit" housing. The goal of the project is for the office park to provide space for businesses that would employ developmentally-disabled persons.

Finally, the project includes a self-storage facility along one side of the office park that would provide additional income.

The Big Wave live/work project will be the subject of tonight’s hearing of the San Mateo County Planning & Building Division at 7pm at El Granada Elementary School. The project will be located near Half Moon Bay Airport, next to the Pillar Ridge mobile home community. The project will include five lots for an office park (four office buildings plus a common area), wellness center, and housing units for disabled adults.

This is not an approval hearing. It is a meeting between the applicant and the county staff to discuss what is required before the application will be consider complete and eligible to start down the road to approval or disapproval.

511.org has added travel times for Highway 92, including a map and travel times from Half Moon Bay to 280 and from 280 to Half Moon Bay.  The travel time link here will give you the time from the intersection of Highways 1 and 92 in Half Moon Bay to the intersection ofHighways 92 and 280.

Much spleen has been vented over the Foothill/Bayview proposal outlined by Coastside Community First.  Mike Ferreira pronounced it “baloney,” “hare-brained,” “mythical” and “haywire.” John Lynch gave it a “snowball’s chance in hell.”  Barry Parr found it “cynical,” Leonard Woren “cavalier.”  But how much substance is there behind all that vitriol?

“The Phantom Proposal”   Many critics have inaccurately attacked the previous, grandiose Foothill plans – not the proposal CCF made.  Naturally, this ‘straw man’ is easy to lambaste: a divided four-lane highway stretching from 92 to Young Avenue at Nurserymen’s Exchange.  The closest road of that size is Highway 1 in Pacifica north of Rockaway.  CCF’s two-lane proposal is wholly different, with a map on the front and Google photo on the back showing its much smaller extent.  Critics demonstrate fear of the actual proposal by refusing to accurately address it.

Costs    This thread of inaccuracy extends to critics’ alleged chief concern – the costs –, which they falsely calculate, based on a phantom proposal obviously not under consideration.  In fact, the reduced costs are one of the actual proposal’s chief virtues.  The Coastal Commission in its 2001 approval required Ailanto to pay its “fare share” (sic) of the roadway and intersection, as they would have with Beachwood.  Since the entire County and State would benefit from the roadway, local officials could procure outside funding, leaving little or no costs to the City.  Under the circumstances, only an obstructionist can believe a two-lane, one-mile-long road is somehow cost-prohibitive.

Click the link for the rest of the article.

Highway 1 at Devil’s Slide will be repaired in four months, toward the end of September, according to Caltrans.

At a press conference in Redwood City, Caltrans announced their plan for the repairs and their estimate for completion. Describing this year’s slide as more extensive than the one in 1995, Caltrans District 4 Director Bijan Sartipi said that over 100 horizontal tiebacks would be sunk under the roadbed twice as deep (150 feet) as those used last time, plus another 60 tiebacks will be sunk 100 feet into the cliff face above the road, in order to anchor the slide to a much larger slide below it.

The repair is "not permanent", Sartipi cautioned, but is designed to last until the tunnel is operational in 2011. "We hope Mother Nature will cooperate until we can finish the tunnel," he said.

In order to complete the repair this quickly, contractors have committed to working around the clock.  Installing the horizontal ties below the roadbed will require drilling crews to be suspended in cages over the cliff from cranes.

Coastsiders may have seen people out in front of Long’s or Safeway gathering signatures for a petition opposing a stoplight at Terrace.  Hundreds have signed up, because a Terrace stoplight makes no sense.  As the Coastal Commission wrote, "it would interrupt the flow of through traffic on Highway 1.  The distance between the current signalized North Main Street/Highway 1 intersection and Terrace is approximately 1,000 feet.  Spacing signalized intersections on Highway 1 this close could increase congestion on the highway because of insufficient ‘stacking’ space."

The interesting question is how such a bad idea ever grew legs.  For the answer, we need to briefly touch upon the history of the Ailanto/Pacific Ridge project.  In 2001, the Coastal Commission approved a 126-house subdivision with some special conditions, like a lot retirement program and only temporary use of Terrace as access for 40 homes. The developer didn’t accept these conditions, so he sued.  By the end of 2002, the Commission was getting nervous and offered to cave in on the lot retirement and Terrace access issues.  HMB Council members were irate.  Mike Ferreira stated (Review, 11/20/02): "This is a complete surrender, and it is so gratuitous to the developer that it sickens me.  That flies right in the face of traffic analysis for the area.  Highway 1 is already at an unsafe level of usage.  This will be a huge mess."  Toni Taylor added: "I can’t even imagine how we’re going to police that intersection [Terrace].  That would be a disaster for the area."

Mike Ferreira is a former member of the Half Moon Bay City Council and a former member of the city’s Planning Commission.  This is the third part of a three-part article.

The Official Foothill Bypass won’t solve our traffic problems and is fraught with environmental and legal complications. And we can’t afford it. One of the biggest flaws in the long-standing Foothill Boulevard proposalin the City’s LCP is its configuration as a City of Half Moon Bay operated "bypass". This is a city of less than 13,000 people which historically has had chronic budget problems and which couldn’t even maintain its own streets until the Ritz started laying its golden eggs just a few years ago.

The idea that a city of such a small size could construct and maintain—yes, maintain—a 4-lane eastern bypass stretching from Young Avenue and Highway 1 in the north and over creeks and wetlands to connect with Highway 92 just east of Hilltop is downright zany. But that’s how it’s drawn up in the city’s Land Use Plan.

Assuming it could even be permitted, it would have to be constructed to highway standards or it would be reduced to rubble by highway traffic usage in a relatively short time. Conservatively, such a bypass would cost at least $150 million and the city would have to set aside millions per year for maintenance and reserves to operate it. I am not familiar with any other small coastal city that operates a bypass of State Highway 1—not Monterey, not Moss Landing. not Watsonville, not Aptos, not Capitola, not Santa Cruz, not Pacifica, not Daly City, and certainly not Bolinas.

And that’s why so many of us have concluded that the only purpose for its inclusion in the Land Use Plan back in the 80s was to facilitate the development of vacant parcels in the City’s foothills. It’s the only sensible explanation for its existence, because there’s no other credible rationale.

The idea of building a below grade intersection at Highway 92 is not new. It was the city’s traffic engineer’s preferred alternative when he studied the issue in the late 90s during the city’s Foothill negotiations with Ailanto over Pacific Ridge. The problem was that it would have added $8 million to the project (The cost has certainly gone up since then).

The city manager then proposed that a traffic signal would be the "short term" solution (for which the developer would pay) and the below grade connection would be the "long term" solution (for which the public would pay). This interesting, to say the least, proposal was never tested at the City Council. The Foothill alignment ran into other problems with wetlands and ensuing problematical realignments, so no Coastal Development Permit has ever been applied for.

In conclusion I would say that CCF’s re-proposal of the Bayview/Foothill Bypass of the 90s, reducing it to two lanes, and restricting it to autos would reduce the overall cost of building it and maintaining it, but it would still be very expensive. And, it wouldn’t really function as a bypass, just as an extra side street with some limited circulation value. And certainly not enough of such value as to justify a significant public expenditure. Or emergency permits.  Or throwing in the towel on lawsuits.  Or looking the other way as laws are ignored or fudged.

Mike Ferreira is a former member of the Half Moon Bay City Council and a former member of the city’s Planning Commission.  This is the second part of a three-part article.

The Bayview/Foothill Bypass will not solve our traffic problems. It would most likely just move the Coastside’s traffic bottlenecks to new locations. But it also fails to solve the legal and environmental challenges that have stymied it in the past.

The original Bayview Drive alignment runs along the dividing line of two moribund subdivisions: Glencree occupies the northern third of the now-open space and Beachwood occupies the southern two-thirds. Glencree’s subdivision map has expired. And in 2005, a state appeals court upheld the city’s denial of a Coastal Development Permit to Beachwood because of wetlands which Beachwood had unsuccessfully argued as not being wetlands.  The state Supreme Court refused Beachwood’s appeal thereby making the decision final.

Although Bayview was dead and buried with the subdivisions it was to have served, it is now being exhumed and slightly realigned onto what at first glance appears to be slightly higher ground. My guess is that someone has selected one of the several wetland delineations that were conducted over time and has conjectured that this new meander would avoid wetlands. I have serious doubts that it would.

CCF infers that Bayview Drive could resurrect the Beachwood subdivision, and avoid a $30 million lawsuit by the developer through a settlement with the City. But the developer’s lawsuit is about refunds and claimed damages, not subdivision/wetlands.  The subdivision/wetland matter was decided by the courts as a function of state law, not as a function of the city’s discretion. The City must abide by the court rulings and cannot consent to a negotiated subdivision resurrection.

Any new project must start from scratch. There must be a new Coastal Development Permit application, a new Environmental Impact Report, and, unquestionably, a new wetland delineation. During recent years the criteria for wetland determination have become more inclusive, not less. Whatever may have been mapped before would most likely be expanded by a new delineation. And, due to the history of these parcels, the Coastal Commission would keep a sharp eye on the process. You can bank on that.

Meanwhile, the proposed Foothill Boulevard alignment behind the high school is inexplicably drawn right through the very wetland (officially delineated) that stalled the project in the 90’s. How does CCF think that would work? Surely, they must have talked to someone in City Hall with a vestige of institutional memory. Or did they?

And extending Foothill into and through Cypress Cove sure looks like cavalier treatment of those voters in Cypress Cove who thought the pro-development folks would deliver them from the traffic exiting a community park. Now they find themselves targeted for the traffic of a major thoroughfare. It’ll be interesting to see how that gets discussed. Especially since the attorney that was used to sue the City is one of the CCF’s founders.

 We shouldn’t be surprised to observe some strong objections from that neighborhood and I think they would have some quite credible legal positions which they could take, as well.

Mike Ferreira is a former member of the Half Moon Bay City Council and a former member of the city’s Planning Commission.  This is the first part of a three-part article.

There is nothing really new in CCF’s Bypass proposal. It’s an amalgam of proposals that failed in the 90s for a variety of legal,engineering, environmental, and financial reasons. Why is this being put forward in a time of transportation crisis with the near certainty of serial failure? Could it be politics?

Let’s start with basic traffic engineering. As has been publicly acknowledged in meeting after meeting on the fully-funded and soon-to-begin Main Street/Highway 92 Project the additional left turn lane from southbound Highway 1 and the additional through lane at Main will process more eastbound cars on Highway 92 than 92 can handle during peak commute times. It’s often the case now—without the improvements.

Either option of a new traffic signal at the Goat Farm for the outlet of Foothill Boulevard at Highway 92 or an underpass and eastbound merge would just serve as another interruption of the flow on 92 and create a new conga line of hopefuls trying to squeeze ahead of their fellow commuters queued up on 92.

One of the CCF proponents at the City Council meeting touted the benefits of accessing the high school via Highway 92. There are several possible, expensive mitigations which could improve the high school morning traffic mess (which I don’t have space for in this commentary). But I do know that putting any portion of the high school traffic into the Highway 92 morning commute should be a non-starter.

During the afternoon commute into Half Moon Bay, the Main Street/92 Project will provide an additional through lane and right turn lane at Main. This will increase peak commute efficiency, probably resulting in bigger backups at the Terrace merge and at the Frenchman’s Creek stoplight. Commuters who live south of Highway 92 will see an immediate benefit from the Main/92 project during the peak commute. But the northbound commuters are going to need further improvements to Highway 1 if they are going to get any net relief.

The light at Frenchman’s Creek was installed by Caltrans as a three-lane light on an emergency basis but actually needs to be widened to five necessitating a wider bridge. Doesn’t it make more sense to focus our attention on getting the funding and multi-agency permitting for those improvements to Highway 1 for the northbound commuters? Should we dissipate our energy on a mythical and prohibitively expensive bypass that will likely never be completed—and would likely just end up worsening the morning congestion on 92 if it were?