Opinion: Foothill Bypass, Part I: A traffic boondoggle in the making

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?