Op-Ed: Save Our Hillsides, Don't Widen Highway 1

DON'T WIDEN THE HIGHWAY, SAVE THE HILLSIDES

Bob Pilgrim photo

 

Comments

[jim alex]

Please tell me where all this growth in Pacifica is going to happen. The city hasn't added to the apartment stock since what, the 70s? 60s? 50s?

Highway 1 should have been repaired and ready before the tunnels project.

I see businesses and commerce going on in that photo!!!

When Pacifica cannot borrow any more money from First National Bank ($2 million line of credit to make payroll), when they have to file bankruptcy and be taken over by the County Of San Mateo, who will these people blame this on? The group people? The people who told them all along they are going down a bad street!!!

This amazes me how so many people can have zero economic or business sense!!!!

[Carl May]

As would be expected, Bob sees the bigger picture and some of Caltrans's probable long-term objectives.

With a bigger budget than the entire individual budgets of more than half of the states in the U.S., Caltrans is a virtual government of its own. It has shown a willingness to bide its time and to piecemeal what it cannot get all at once. So don't expect specific widening projects for short segments to make much sense without connecting those segments in your mind. The four-lane capacity of the tunnels and bridges beckons.

[Matthew Levie]

I think there's no chance this will ever get built.

First, there's no plan. It doesn't matter which direction they want to build it, east or west. Either way they're going to gore somebody's ox and the hue and cry will end it.

Second, there's no need. The traffic is a little thick from the week school starts to Thanksgiving. For the rest of the year there's almost none. I think most people are minimally bothered by it.

Third, it won't work. I fail to see how widening the road but letting it narrow again will solve the problem. At best it will just move the backup half a mile up the road--and as Bob points out, induce growth that will choke it again in no time.

I suppose fourth could be "there's no money," but shouldn't the first three suffice?

If we really want to reduce traffic, we should be looking at drastically improving bus service; adding jughandles and pedestrian bridges at Reina del Mar and Fassler; and getting schoolbuses or providing incentives for parents to carpool to school. All far cheaper, far quicker, and far more effective than widening the highway.

[Steve Sinai]

"But Caltrans/Pacifica and other agencies face an unexpected problem in shaping their growth-inducing impact: They cannot widen Highway 1 to the west because the entire quarry is (functionally) an environmentally sensitive habitat area (ESHA) as discussed and described by the California Coastal Commission (CCC) in its report F5a-7 2008. This means that any widening of the highway will have to be made to the east."

Does someone want to point out where report F5a-7 2008 says this? From what I've read, the CCC was talking about the area around the creek and to the west of it, not the area near the highway.