Op-Ed: Highway Widening Planners Dismiss Foes as a Few Vocal Retirees

Download Hwy 1-Calera PDT 02, 4-17-08 - Minutes

Download Hwy 1-Calera PDT 05, 11-19-08 - Minutes (Revised)

At the links above are 2008 meeting minutes of the Project Development Team (PDT) that controls the Highway 1 widening project.

At the 4/17/08 meeting, new access points for a 40-plus-acre parcel along Highway 1 just north of the Lutheran church are discussed and accommodated by Caltrans and  San Mateo County Transportation Authority (SMCTA) staff. This is a growth-inducing impact of the widening project, even though the project's draft environmental impact report (DEIR) says that the project will have no growth-inducing impacts as it is not associated with a project.

And at the 11/17/08 PDT meeting, Joe Hurley of SMCTA focuses on a six-lane project, rejecting all other alternatives. The collection of meeting minutes on the widening project highlights a process driven by state and county staff with little or no regard for the local population, other than avoiding lawsuits. Of interest are statements by Hurley and our own public works director Van Ocampo that characterize opponents of this project as simply a few retirees who don't use the highway during peak hours, and that these so-called retirees are a very vocal group.

Todd Bray

Comments

[San Bruno]

A guy named Peebles wanted to help with the cost of fixing Highway 1 outside the quarry project, but the local Pacifica hippies chased him out of town.

The intersection of 380 and El Camino Real flows traffic better now after 1,000 housing units were built.

Why is it every other city can but Pacifica?

[Carl May]

For those not familiar with how big highway projects are railroaded through in California, these minutes should be a wakeup. Caltrans and any other agencies directly involved decide what they want to do among themselves, and the whole planning procedure then turns to how to accomplish what they want to do, given the required regulations and steps they must manipulate and circumvent.

It's amazing the money (our money) that has been spent on the meetings and associated work so far -- many times as much as would have been necessary to study the intersections, including the timing of the lights for various periods in the day, and implementing some of the possible fixes, at least on a trial or interim basis, with infrastructure that already exists. But then this is, in its typical bureaucratic, Californicating way, about spending the maximum amount of public money they can get away with spending under existing political and economic circumstances.

Neophytes to this shadowy yet imperious approach should be sure to read in detail how the PDT deals with the matter of public input, especially public comment. Comments, in this case, are divided into three groups and "answered" by Caltrans personnel familiar with digesting and disposing of such things. That is all. There is no expectation of having to alter course one significant iota no matter what the comments say. If you are young, you'll see this pattern of hegemony and bureaucratic behavior on highway projects any number of times in the more populated areas of California before they put you in a box.

[Steve Sinai]

Were you not at the Council Chambers meeting where all of your alternative were addressed by Caltrans and the SMCTA, Jana Bird?

[Jay Bird]

Hundreds of comments have been taken in what was termed a public process. Those comments have yet to be considered when making a decision. Not one cost-benefit study was done.

http://www.pacificariptide.com/pacifica_riptide/2012/03/public-comments-impact-highway-1-widening-by-bill-collins-the-proposed-widening-of-highway-1-generated-so-much-contro.html

Suggestions for cost-benefit studies from the public include:

1. Facilitate car-pooling. Most cars have just one occupant.
2. Add a flex lane in the middle, northbound in the morning, southbound in the afternoon.
3. Time intersection lights to reduce stops. There are no backups where Highway 1 is two lanes and without stoplights.
4. Adjust school schedules. This is a schoolday problem only.
5. Provide vans for schoolchildren (without parents driving their own kids).
6. School(s) could coordinate parents driving other nearby kids to and from school.
7. Study putting an underpass at the intersection to obviate the stoplights.
8. Institute more frequent and better bus service with benches and shelters at each stop. You shouldn’t have to use a car to get around in Pacifica.
9. Provide vans to major commuter destinations.
10. Limit turns onto Highway 1 to allow north/south traffic to flow with fewer stops during peak commute times.
11. Meter the flow of traffic entering Highway 1.

[Chris Fogel]

"It's utterly amazing to me that a handful of people with no engineering or technical training think they know more about traffic engineering than genu-wine traffic engineers."

During a public meeting in 2010, I asked one of these traffic engineers if the project team had accounted for latent demand. He stared at me blankly for a moment before answering, "No."

Let's just say the answer didn't fill me with confidence.

[todd bray]

Steve, I appreciate your "Hannity and Colmes"-style contributions here, but if you take the time to read through these files, you will see a group of people who are gaming the data to fit a project that they want to do, and why the PDT wanting a six-lane solution isn't ever really answered, except for cost. It certainly isn't because it is the best way forward, just the cheapest and easiest thing to do. Caltrans actually demanded that there should be a noticeable improvement in year 1 of the project or it would be hard to prioritize. This was when the meetings took a turn for the worst as the discussion then focused on how to rearrange county population projections.

The six-lane solution has nothing to do with a real traffic flow solution. Discussions on how best to present traffic counts focus on how to make the numbers look their worst by using "queue times" instead of the standard Level of Service (LOS). This clearly shows the PDT is not interested in accuracy but in how to justify the six-lane solution. These discussions also include how to incorporate the ABAG projected growth for the county, which these engineers agree does not reflect the projected growth for the coast, but they use the much higher county projections anyway.

Steve, I strongly urge you to read the 20-plus minutes from these meetings. There is nothing professional about them. You will be reading the minutes of a large group of state and county employees who have been left alone without adult supervision to mold a project and its DEIR into something they have concocted at will from data that were purposely manipulated.

[Steve Sinai]

I would imagine that SMCTA and Caltrans run into small, loud groups of "we-are-at-one-with-the-earth-and-speak-for-the-community" types whenever they try to get something done. The former have probably become immune to the latter.

What they're seeing is the same small group that opposes everything. If the project was clearly opposed by the majority of the community, or even by some new faces, they (and I) would take the opposition more seriously.

It's utterly amazing to me that a handful of people with no engineering or technical training think they know more about traffic engineering than genu-wine traffic engineers.

[todd bray]

I asked for all the Project Development Team minutes. It clarifies so many unanswered questions from the CEQA process so far, especially how "they" determined what the project should be, how to "sell it" and how to best circumvent the regulatory process. Reading sthe minutes is dry, but it highlights the behind-closed-doors process the San Mateo County Transportation Authority staff and their counterparts at Caltrans follow to push a project through, using their collective force in place of popular support. A need was manufactured, supporting documentation was manipulated, and a solution was chosen that was simply the easiest thing the PDT thought was possible.

Internal discussions identified peak traffic as an intersection issue, but the traffic studies were purposely manipulated to support a six-lane project.

It's utterly amazing to me that so many college-educated city, state, and county engineering employees can be in a room together and openly manipulate every aspect of this project to date. I recommend that anyone interested in this item contact the SMCTA and ask for a CD of the agendas and minutes of the PDT to be mailed to their homes for personal review.