Widening State Highway 1 Won't Work for Santa Cruz County

01/19/2019

A study of transportation in Los Angeles concludes that in spite of building more light-rail train lines and adding buses, congestion is getting worse on the roads and transit ridership is declining. "...the recipe for transit success is not mysterious: Build good service, and make driving hard. The second part is politically difficult."

A survey of L.A.'s Measure M supporters finds important lessons for other cities trying to rally transit support.

01/18/2019

In the 2018 RTC speaker series we heard over and over that widening highways does not reduce congestion beyond the short term. In spite of that, the RTC voted today to include more auxiliary lanes (beyond those already funded by Measure D) and ramp metering on Highway 1. This decision was based in part upon the Final Environmental Impact Report on widening Highway 1 by the California state transportation department Caltrans.

The truth about the auxiliary lanes project is that they are designed to expand the pavement on Highway 1 to accommodate an HOV lane in addition to the auxiliary lane (4 lanes in each direction). This is significantly more expensive than the additional pavement needed to pave a bus lane on the shoulder.

Attorney William Parkin is planning to file a lawsuit on behalf of the Campaign for Sustaintable Transportation (CFST) by the deadline of February 4th 2019. The lawsuit will name the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (SCC RTC) as defendants. The suit will claim that the Final Environmental Impact Report authored by Caltrans is invalid due to reasons that include the following:

1. No Analysis of Alternatives Contrary to the mandate of the California Environmental Quality Act, the EIR does not examine alternatives to the highway expansion project. The only alternatives that are analyzed in the EIR are two versions of highway expansion and a No Build Alternative. Notably absent from the EIR are three alternative strategies for travel parallel to Highway 1 that are analyzed by the Regional Transportation Commission’s recently published Unified Corridors Investment Study:
* Bus-On-Shoulder (a bus-only lane the shoulder of Highway 1)
* Transit on the rail corridor between Watsonville and Santa Cruz
* Enhanced bus service on Soquel and Freedom Blvd.

2. Flawed GHG Analysis The EIR claims that the preferred alternative, which would double the existing width of the highway to accommodate an HOV lane and an auxiliary lane in each direction, will result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions relative to the No Build Alternative. If this absurd claim is not challenged, Caltrans will continue to use it to justify HOV lane expansions in other areas of the state. “Want to reduce greenhouse gases? Widen your highway.”

The EIR’s rationale is that vehicles traveling faster during the peak period will consume fuel more efficiently. This rationale depends on the assumption that the congestion relief provided by the highway expansion will last beyond the short-term. Research commissioned by the California Air Resources Board reports: “Numerous studies …consistently show that adding capacity to roadways fails to alleviate congestion for long because it actually increases vehicle miles traveled (VMT).”

3. Flawed estimate of VMT impact A successful lawsuit would mean that a new EIR would be subject to new regulations under the California Environmental Quality Act. These regulations require that environmental impact reports include an analysis of increased traffic due to induced travel and specifies how induced travel should be calculated. The advisory to the new regulations calls out HOV lanes as an example of a project “that would likely lead to a measurable and substantial increase in vehicle travel.” In differentiating highway expansion from conversion of existing lanes to HOV lanes, the advisory echoes the Sierra Club’s transportation policy which reads:
High occupancy vehicle (HOV) and high occupancy vehicle/toll (HOT) lanes should come from converting existing highway lanes rather than constructing new lanes. This will avoid constructing new lanes which are mixed-flow much of the day, or are converted to full-time mixed-flow after construction.

It is of statewide and national significance that the bogus justifications for highway widening be challenged.
Join us in standing up for climate and social justice by contributing to our lawsuit to block expansion of Highway 1. Send a check to Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, PO Box 7927, Santa Cruz, 95061.
Thanks!

11/12/2017

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Sunday Nov 12 2017, "As You See It":

RTC shouldn’t support a project without the data

I feel duped. After encouraging my friends and neighbors to participate in the Regional Transportation Commission’s online survey of proposed projects, I read the article in last week’s Sentinel about the commission supporting a $600 million Highway 1 project that is part of the survey. Are these surveys just window dressing? Are the public workshops we attended just shams? Are the visual simulations just marketing gimmicks? Only three members of the commission saw how preemptively inappropriate it was to vote on a project for which the RTC is still soliciting public input. Thank you commissioners John Leopold, Sandy Brown and Andy Schiffrin, sitting in for Ryan Coonerty, for showing respect for the public and not treating us as if we were just a bunch of suckers.

— Jan Karwin, Santa Cruz

11/09/2017

We could fix this traffic congestion if we just could make the road wider yet again...

11/09/2017

http://www.businessinsider.com/self-driving-cars-traffic-congestion-2017-6

Automakers often say self-driving cars will ease congestion by driving more efficiently, but if people don't ride together, traffic could get worse.

11/08/2017

The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) has chosen to widen the freeway and build HOV (high-occupancy-vehicle = carpool and bus) lanes on the Highway 1 freeway as its preferred option for alleviating congestion. This was done in spite of the high cost and the history of HOV lanes failing to alleviate congestion for very long, often not at all. There are numerous examples around the state, country, and world which prove that HOV lanes are not a solution to congestion any more than getting one injection of a narcotic is a solution to the addition problem. They are both short-term feel-good fixes. This article in today's Santa Cruz Sentinel shows how Caltrans is thinking now about requiring more people to be in each HOV or converting HOV into HOT (high-occupancy-toll) lanes.

What are better solutions? Land-use policies (zoning) which place people and their jobs closer together. More affordable housing near jobs. Much better public transit. And .... (please comment with your ideas).

SAN FRANCISCO >> With Bay Area traffic bad and getting worse, transportation officials are considering a drastic remedy for some clogged highways: requiring vehicles to carry three people, not just two, to use the carpool lane.

11/03/2017

WATSONVILLE >> A plan to add a bus and carpool lane in both directions of Highway 1 between Morrissey Boulevard and San Andreas/Larkin Road received support Thursday from the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission at its meeting at Watsonville City Hall.

10/29/2017

On Thursday, Nov. 2, the Santa Cruz County RTC will be considering its staff's recommendation to accept widening the Highway 1 freeway and adding High Occupancy Vehicle lanes and auxiliary lanes as the preferred options for alleviating congestion on the freeway. But wait, what is congestion? Is it like the classic statement about p**n -- I can't define it but I know it when I see it? Or is there an engineering definition of road congestion. There is, and in January 2017 the US Department of Transportation changed the definition as it is used for decisions on highway improvements. Does the RTC and Caltrans joint environmental impact report (EIR) use the current definition or the obsolete definition? Should the RTC update the EIR using the new definition? Is the current EIR invalid?

At long last, USDOT has finalized new requirements for how states and metro areas will have to measure traffic congestion and in the final rule — responding to the outpouring of comments they received — they backed away from most of the outdated measures of congestion that were proposed.

10/29/2017

The Santa Cruz County RTC is studying alternatives to building more lanes on the Highway 1 freeway in its Unified Corridors Investment Study. Here's a compact display of the things being considered, with pros and cons. This was the material displayed on easels at the recent public outreach meetings.

10/29/2017

Traffic congestion is a fact of life for every driver. And as we reveal the latest TomTom Traffic Index results, we can see that the problem is not going away.
https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/trafficindex/list?citySize=LARGE&continent=ALL&country=ALL

Governments cannot simply ‘build away’ congestion. Studies have shown over the years that building new motorways or freeways does not solve the issue.

At TomTom, we’re excited about the paradigm shift that we’re seeing reflected by many governments’ attitudes to transforming our cities globally. They’re managing congestion with clever, sustainable policies – such as better public transport infrastructure, investment in cycling and walking initiatives, and ambitious policies pointing to the future of automated driving.

https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/trafficindex/beatcongestion

10/28/2017

http://www.ecosacramento.net/2017/07/ecos-sues-caltrans-on-highway-50-expansion-project/

July 17, 2017 On July 3, 2017, the Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) filed a Petition for Writ of Mandate with the Sacramento County Superior Court challenging the adequacy of the Initial Study/Environmental Assessment with a Mitigated Negative Declaration prepared by the California Depa