HOT in Chicago

SANTA CRUZ CA

$46m voted for HOT lanes

Karena Pushnik transp planner at the Santa Cruz County Regional Transp Commission (SCCRTC) chuckles a little as she describes how they came to vote $46m for carpool/toll (HOT) lanes on CA-1 west of Santa Cruz city.

“No one person really thought of the idea. It wasn’t the recommendation of the consultants, but they did mention it. Staff didn’t push it. There were two or three people here, local citizens, who talked about it. People knew about it from southern California. It got tossed around and it just seemed a sensible compromise. There wasn’t a desire to go with anything very big and to demand extra taxes. Enough commissioners thought it made sense.”

So by a vote 6 to 4 HOT lanes were adopted and allocated $46m August 5 in Santa Cruz. This although an $800k major investment study (MIS) by Parsons Brinck had not even looked at HOT lanes. It had studied 7 build options for the 10km (6.2mi) corridor (from the CA-1/CA-17 IC to State Park Dr, Aptos. Widening the highway by adding a pair of HOV lanes, a busway on and little used freight railroad and improved bus service were the three road options versus four rail options. Rail produced only between 900 and 5300 passengers/day. All transit options are slow. And liable to be hazardous because they involve lots of grade crossings.

By the sea below the redwoods

Santa Cruz is a pretty oceanside town about 80km due south of San Francisco and about 40km southwest of San Jose. It is separated from both by the rugged Santa Cruz Mountain range which varies from 550m to 1200m height and lies about half way between the coast and San Jose. The city has about 60,000 pop but has close connections with a series of settlements further south along the reverse-C-shaped coastline that forms Monterrey Bay. The county has 250k pop while the whole Monterrey Bay area has about 600k. The only highspeed link with Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay area is CA-17 which is a windy mountainous 2x2-lane freeway/arterial that climbs through stands of towering trees (some are actually redwoods) to 550m elevation.

Santa Cruz is quite a ‘green’ constituency. Economic development would be greatly assisted by a widened CA-17 and/or a tunnel under the highest part of the mountain range but there is little push for that – for fear of the area being overrun by weekend visitors from the Bay area. CA-1 is different, it seems, something of the Main Street of the Monterrey bay communities themselves with all the communities strung out along it. A 1960s 2x2lane freeway it runs 70k veh/day.

A rough estimate was that widening to 2x3-lanes for the extra HOV lane would be $285m. That covers rebuilds of all the ICs to higher standard. Presumably HOT lanes would cost about the same. (Unless they did a single lane reversible – feasible as flow is quite directional with some 20k users of CA-1 heading on up CA-17 to Silicon Valley or wherever.)

Pushnik says that the SCCRTC has to wait on Caltrans which has promised a detailed survey and report on the existing road in 18mths. The $46m is seen as a local downpayment on the project which is likely to need substantial extra funding. In addition to the $46m for HOT lanes the Commission voted $124m over 20 years for local bus service, $50m for local road improvements, $23m for bike and pedestrian paths and $15m to buy up the railroad right of way. The right of way would enable rail or busway projects to be revived, though Aug 5 a move to commit the commission to light rail was voted down.

The numbers of people likely to use rail are a fraction of those an extra highway lane could carry.

(Contact Karena Pushnik, Debbie Hale SCCRTA 831 460 3200)

Caption fishhook

Santa Cruz motorists just hate the CA-1/CA-17/downtown connector IC which they have dubbed the Fishook. It does seem to break about every rule in the highway design book. Especially brilliant is the way westbound traffic on CA-1 has to do a near 360 deg loop and then traffic wanting to go downtown has to fight its way across traffic from CA-17/south heading west on CA-1. Not one of Caltrans greater designs but perhaps it should be put on a Register of Historic Buildings as a contra-example. Beside it’s traffic calming isn’t it?