Highway 1 crosswalk @ Moss Beach: worse than nothing?

crosswalk unpermitted

news story

safety debate

Kyle Ludowitz, Half Moon Bay Review

Comments

[Carl May]

Actually, after much discussion and research into many kinds of crossings for many different situations a few years ago, a form of at-grade crossing with a center island showed the most promise for all concerned: pedestrians, handicapped, cyclists, drivers, taxpayers, etc. Then you have to put the things where the benefit is greatest. Only the minority who routinely cross where the current badly designed mistake is located--certainly no more than 10 percent of the crossers in Moss Beach--will use it.

[Dan Green]

It seems to me that 25 years is a good long run at accomplishing nothing, and a fair sign that the inaction will continue for just as long. At least now some drivers are aware that there's a town here, with businesses and people who might care to exercise their legal right to get across the highway. I've heard that an undercrossing (check THOSE out for crime) or a pedestrian overcrossing would probably be used by about 10 percent of pedestrians. Someone did something and everyone who didn't is complaining. Double bogey on every hole.

[Carl May]

As I said already, safe crossings on the Midcoast have been an active topic for more than 25 years, spurred, among many other problems, by the deaths of young boys caught on the highway in Montara and Moss Beach. The locations for such crossings have been studied and plotted in detail several times over. The kinds of crossings--at grade, overcrossing, undercrossing, and every variation of these--have been studied in detail locally, mostly by a committee of the MCC or the MCC itself, but also more superficially and less knowledgeably by several consultants on Midcoast transportation hired by the county. On the Parks and Rec Committee of the MCC, which had a standing subcommittee and meeting item on the crossings for several years, was the father of the boy who was killed on the highway in Montara. Caltrans tends to ignore all of the local studies and suggestions because they are unto themselves in all things highway, as Pacificans should know well from long experience with the agency.

No, a crosswalk at his location has not been under active consideration for ten years. A crossing, which is not necessarily a crosswalk because of all the other ways of getting across referred to above, has long been suggested locally for Moss Beach in the area of California and Highway 1. That is where more people cross than any other location in this part of Moss Beach, and it is a block north of where the current crude, haphazard, mislocated crossing was painted.

[Dan Green]

So a crosswalk here has apparently been under "active consideration" for ten years, as I heard on Coastal Windage. Is there anyone else who thinks this is a preposterous wait to cross the road? Small wonder someone finally felt that was long enough.

[Karen Rosenstein]

Honestly don't understand why Caltrans thinks that putting a crosswalk in the middle of a 50mph section without any type of flashing lights is a good idea. When I'm driving this stretch, I'm starting to drop my speed for the next section at 45mph just around the corner, and I can't tell you how many times I've had people "signaling me" via my rear view mirror to speed it up. I've even had people PASS me on the next stretch in Montara because I was going the speed limit and they wanted to continue doing the 60mph they wanted to do. But oh yeah, this pedestrian crosswalk will solve all of these problems. SHEESH!!!

[dan green]

Bullies on Nextdoor are giving out false legal advice. All but telling motorists they have every right to run down pedestrians in unmarked crosswalks, etc. Do NOT take my word for it. Check it out. Join the bloody site if you have to.

[Carl May]

This remedies nothing. Safe crossings in the Midcoast have been an issue for the past 25 years, including studies, reviews, and suggestions from locals having experience with Caltrans, San Mateo County, and with our stretch of Route 1 totaling many hundreds, even thousands, of years. This hastily painted crossing is the worst idea I have seen yet and falls into the category of making both crossing the highway on foot and vehicle traffic on the highway worse. And no, there have not been five pedestrian or bicycle deaths at the location of the crosswalk in the past however many years -- which is not to diminish the death of a young boy that did occur less than a hundred meters away from this crosswalk.

[Peter Loeb]

I encountered this crosswalk for the first time yesterday, going to and from Half Moon Bay. I'll go over it again today, a beautiful Saturday of a three-day weekend. I hope the people who aren't regular travelers on Highway 1 don't plow through that crosswalk thinking they're on a state highway (which they are) and not expecting to see a crosswalk in the middle of no-place-in-particular. (Editor's note: Hey, buster, who ya callin' no place in particular? Signed: Moss Beach Mafia)

[dan green]

For suggesting that pedestrians have the right to a safe crossing in a marked crosswalk, I lost my chance for someone on NextDoor to save my life in any number of easily foreseeable situations that can arise in one's daily existence. It was worth it. Caltrans' response promises to remedy a situation that a local resident claims has cost five lives in the past.