 Welcome to the Transportation Cafe, a regular show focused on the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission's projects and programs. The Regional Transportation Commission, or RTC's, mission is to plan and fund a broad range of safe, convenient, reliable, and efficient transportation choices for the community. The topic for today's RTC Transportation Cafe is the Highway 1 Corridor Program. We will examine what the RTC is doing in this corridor and why. I'm George Dondaro, Executive Director of the RTC, and my guests today are Ellen Peary, Second District County Supervisor and Transportation Commission Board Member. And we also have Kim Schultz, Project Manager for the Highway 1 Corridor Program and Senior Transportation Planner. So Commissioner Peary, let me start by asking you, why is the Highway 1 Corridor so important and why is RTC pursuing projects in that corridor? Well, the Highway 1 Corridor is really almost the lifeline of Santa Cruz County. If you want to get from South County to North County, you're going to go on Highway 1. The alternatives are extremely limited. There are a few two-lane roads that run north and south as well, but it's pretty much it. And what we have found, the Highway was built 50, 60 years ago, and it doesn't meet the needs that we have now. There are far more people in Santa Cruz County than the freeway was ever designed for. So as a result, we have periods of intense congestion on the freeway, which is a problem for a lot of reasons, safety being one of them, greenhouse gas being another, people wasting time yet another. So what the RTC is trying to do is improve that corridor, get the traffic moving, meet the transportation needs of the community as best as we can, and at the same time, make it easier for people to use alternative transportation. So example, we want there to be express buses from Watsonville to Santa Cruz, and we want those express buses to actually be an express that actually moves rather than be stuck in traffic. And we want people to carpool, but for those things, it needs to work. It needs to be better than driving in your car by yourself. Ellen, what do you hear from your constituents about overflow highway traffic? Well, what do I hear that I can repeat in public? I hear frustration and irritation and anger. In the area that I represent, which goes from Capitola to Watsonville, as I said before, there aren't a lot of good options. So when the traffic, when the freeway is stopped, which it sometimes is, just almost stopped or moving at five miles an hour, people tend to think, well, I could do better on the side roads, so they get off on the side roads. And those of us who drive it a lot know that, in fact, you can't do better on the side roads, so there's no point in getting off. But people do, they get off, and then those roads become incredibly congested. And so I hear the frustration both of the people who need to get somewhere, as well as the people who live in the neighborhoods who have, you know, traffic unexpectedly bumper to bumper traffic going by their front door. So you get quite a bit of feedback on that. I do. I do. Okay. So what's been done thus far in the Highway 1 corridor? Well, for many years, not a whole lot, but starting about 10 or 15 years ago, I started planning some projects. The first one was the Highway 1 17 interchange and merge lanes, you know, sort of from the fish hook south, basically. And that was completed, I think, in 2008. And that's made a big difference. That's made that strip, which is maybe a mile long or so, much safer, much smoother, and that's been good. Okay. I believe there was also some widening on Mission Street up at the... There was some widening on Mission Street, that's correct. That's been helpful also, although that still is a very constrained area. So Kim, you're the project manager for the Soquel Morrissey auxiliary lanes project. Can you tell us a little bit more about this project that's now underway? Well, George, this is an operational improvement. It's a complement to the 1 17 work that Ellen mentioned. And the idea is to smooth out the weaving and merging of motorists entering and exiting the freeway. And we do this by extending that third southbound lane that currently ends just north of the Fonda Overcrossing to connect with Soquel off-ramp. And then we'll be building an auxiliary lane from the Soquel on-ramp to connect directly to the Morrissey off-ramp. These auxiliary lanes, like I say, are extensions of the on-ramp to connect with the off-ramp to again smooth out the weaving and merging efforts of the motorists and really get the best efficiency we can out of the highway. Of course, to do this, we're going to have to rebuild the La Fonda Overcrossing to provide a wider span of the bridge over the highway to accommodate these new lanes. So can you tell us a little bit more about the La Fonda Bridge? Yes. The La Fonda Bridge will be taken down in beginning of summer, coincident with summer break at the schools, to minimize the disruption of the community in the area of schools were in that location. It will take six to eight months before the bridge will be operational again. But we're working very closely with the schools to minimize the disruption when schools get back into session. The new bridge will have wider sidewalks and a bike lanes to accommodate students and others traveling through that area in walking or riding their bike. Very good. So what other features will the Soquel Morrissey project include? Well, thanks for asking because I haven't mentioned yet that the commission is managing this project. Contrary to other projects where Caltrans is the project manager, the RTC is managing this project for the very first time. Not only did it allow us to get this project out on an underway six months earlier, but it allows us to be involved in some new initiatives. One I'm quite excited about is with the Calera Corporation, we're going to be using green concrete. It's not actually green, but it's manufactured capturing the carbon and the heat out of the smokestacks, the electrical plant at Moss Landing, and the creation of a cementitious material that bonds the concrete, and we'll be using that concrete in building sidewalks at Morrissey interchange for the community there. Another element is biofiltration. With the new lanes we're adding to the highway, we're actually also building bioswales so we can direct the storm water through these areas or special grasses and bioswales to capture the silt and pollution that otherwise drains into the creeks and ultimately into our ocean. We're very proud of that. So Ellen, what will this project do to address the bottlenecks that are currently out there on Highway 1? Well, I'm really hopeful that it'll do a lot. This is a project that I've been thinking about for a long time. I remember when I first came on the RTC and I saw the design for the Highway 17, Highway 1 interchange, and I saw that as you came south on Highway 1, you passed Morrissey and a lane came in, so at that point there were four lanes in the design, and then before you got to the La Fonda Street Bridge, it was down to two. So I'm looking at that and thinking, well, I don't know how well that's going to work. So as soon as I saw that, I started saying, well, can't we do something about that? And of course I was thinking, can't we just change the Highway 17, Highway 1 project? And of course everyone laughed because those projects are in the works for so many years. The idea that they're going to make this little change at the end was kind of crazy. But it did fortunately sort of start the conversation about, you know, this is a problem and we need to fix it. And so the problem I described, which is that you narrow down from at least three and at points four lanes to two lanes to go under the La Fonda Street Bridge. So I think that when we're done, the La Fonda Street Bridge will, it will be new, of course, it'll be much wider so that three full lanes can go under it going each direction. And that the far right lane going south then just exits at Soquel Drive. And a lot of traffic gets off at Soquel Drive, so I think that that will be good. That's not to say that there won't still be some congestion, but I think that there'll be less congestion because a lot of people won't be involved in it because they get off at Morrissey or at Soquel. But there still will be some. Same thing actually kind of coming north, which is when you come north in the morning and there's a lot of traffic, it loosens up at Soquel because it's getting to the area where there are going to be three lanes, just another entrance or exit ahead. And so I think that will have a ripple effect when those lanes start back one exit. I mean, I think you may start feeling it as far back as 41st Avenue. So in effect, we'll be shortening the bottleneck. Correct. The size of that bottleneck. That's what I hope. So Kim mentioned that the RTC is taking the lead on the construction phase of this project, which is a first time for the agency. So from your perspective, what's the value in that? Why is RTC doing that? The value, I think, is just keeping our hands on it, keeping our hands on it and our eyes on it full time as there are issues that come up, which there always are. There always are things that come up that you didn't plan for will be right there. And if we're right there, that really means the community is right there. So it's not somebody in Sacramento making the decision about how to handle things, we're right there. So we can both keep people informed, get feedback from them as there are issues, and be really involved in the critical decisions. We were also, as my understanding, we were able to start earlier because we were doing it locally. So we started about six months earlier than we otherwise would have. And who knows? Maybe we'll even end early. Let's hope. I'm not making promises. Okay. All right. We'll keep an eye on that. So Kim, are there other projects in the works on this corridor? Yes, there is. We're really excited to be doing a long range plan and vision for the corridor. The footprint of this plan is actually stretches from Santa Cruz to Aptos, it's about a nine mile stretch. To look at an ultimate vision of a corridor we would like and what our community needs and deserves. And through this analysis, we call this a tier one umbrella environmental analysis. And we will look at the cumulative impacts, the benefits, and the operational issues associated with making improvements along the corridor. We hope to get this environmental document out on the streets to the public in the fall of 2012, so just a few months away. And the challenge now is that the total cost of the construction of these improvements is in the range of $500 million. There simply isn't enough money to build that as one project. So we'll be breaking it down into incremental projects, what we call tier two projects. The next tier two project that's on deck after the SoCal Morrissey project is auxiliary lanes between 41st Avenue and SoCal Interchanges as well as a bike pedestrian crossing at Chanticleer. So how will that next tier two project be determined? Well of course the tier two projects have to be consistent with the vision of the overall project to improve traffic flow on Highway 1. By first fundamentally reducing congestion. And to promote, as Ellen was talking, alternative transportation. Alter behavior much like my own. Many of the times I'm driving to work alone if I'm not driving the kids to school or to sporting activities. To provide real alternatives like express buses, carpools, with the time advantage that involves. And finally of course to improve safety. That's the overall goal. When it comes to selecting specific projects we'll use performance measures with indicators of cost benefit, of improved travel time, reduced delay, and reduced vehicle miles travel. That's a surrogate really for the overall congestion not only on the highway but on our local streets and roads where many motorists will search out for shortcuts. As well as it speaks to the emissions and ultimately to climate change. So what kind of projects might be considered as tier two projects? Well I would put them into four categories. Like I've mentioned there's auxiliary relays to improve the efficiencies of existing freeway. There's the bicycle pedestrian crossings to provide alternatives to the freeway interchanges for non-motors to get from one side of the freeway to the other. Over time we're going to have to take a look at our freeway interchanges to smooth out the operations between the highway and the arterial system as we already have experienced much delay at 41st Avenue Interchange for instance. And then ultimately to build those carpool lanes, bus lanes, what we call high occupancy vehicle lanes to provide real time savings for people that carpool and express buses and the inducement of travel time savings by them using those lanes. So this is really a long term vision. It is a very long term vision. You mentioned earlier project, the next project on deck is another auxiliary lane project between 41st and SoCal avenues. That's correct, auxiliary lanes would be built northbound and southbound between 41st Avenue and SoCal respectively and what actually that does is just extend the on ramp to the freeway for instance at 41st to connect directly to the off ramp at SoCal. Again extending and smoothing out that weaving and merging distance, take out the anxiety of entering into a crowded freeway and smooth that out over a longer period, distance. You know this is the busiest section of the highway carrying well over 100,000 vehicles a day, not only in Santa Cruz County but virtually entire central coast of California. Important element also of that project is building a bike pedestrian crossing at Chante de Caler. Total cost of this on deck project is $29 million. So those bike pedestrian over crossings are important to sort of tie the neighborhoods back together for foot and bicycle traffic. Absolutely, you know non-motors and motorists just don't mix well and as the region, urbanized area of the region develops even more they're going to become more and more valuable to the community. So Ellen can our community come up with $500 million for this entire tier one project or is there a new funding approach? Short answer, no. When we started talking about the HOV lanes on Highway 1 we were talking about $300 million which is still a lot of money. But the economy was in better shape and it seemed like it was something that was potentially doable. Now when we're talking about $500,000 and a community that's struggling to keep its current roads in good shape it seems really not very likely. So the question is what do we do then? We're finishing the environmental document for this project that has high occupancy vehicle lanes and kind of all the bells and whistles. We can't afford to do it so we're doing what Kim had talked about is sort of taking out pieces sort of subsets. We're taking subsets of that plan and doing them as we go along. So each of these subsets is more affordable. For example the one we're currently doing the SoCal Morrissey is about $18 million. And I think you said the SoCal to 41st Avenue is $29 million is the estimate. And the bike lanes, one of the pedestrian bicycle crossings that I'm really interested in is in the Aptos area and it's from one end of Mar Vista to the other which was cut off when the freeway went through and that's $6 or $7 million. So it's possible that we will get either state or federal funding for some of these as the time goes by we'll make the application and try to get it. But we might also have to think about becoming what they call a self-help county. And a self-help county means that we've adopted a sales tax or some other kind of tax or fee that we generate locally and then that we keep locally and it's reserved for transportation projects. And so that not only gives us funding for some of these projects but it also increases the likelihood that we'll get state and federal funding. State and federal funding, as you know, it's unpredictable. You can't count on it for anything. But one of the sort of the new criteria that they look at is this going to a self-help county. So it's just going to a community that's willing to pay some itself, that's willing to tax itself for some money and that makes a big difference. And I understand that about 85% of Californians live in self-help counties. That's right. Yeah. That's right. And we don't. We don't. So that puts us kind of behind, you know. And that you can also use that local money to leverage the federal and state money sometimes. Exactly. Yeah. So we've discussed the costs and the funding challenges. So can you tell us a little bit more about those challenges? Give us some context here in the following. Sure. Well, I've heard it estimated that we are something like $2 billion short of the money we really need to do the transportation projects that we would like to do. That's such a large... That's over a 25-year period. Correct. Yeah. That's a large number. But even like looking at the county, we get information about the condition of our roads and what it's going to cost to bring them up to a good standard. And last I heard it was something like $90 million to make all the county roads, which is about 600 miles of road, to bring it up to a standard that was at least qualified as good. Not even excellent, but good. So there's tremendous amount of transportation needs out there. And I think that people feel, understandably, that that's one of the primary purposes of government is to build roads and bridges and to be able to get us from one place to another safely. And so I think there's a lot of feeling like we're failing to do that and we need to do something about it. Yeah. It's a big challenge. Well, we've barely had a chance to skim the surface of these projects, but I'd like to encourage our viewers to check out our website where there's a lot more detail about these projects as well as RTC's other programs and projects. The website is listed at the bottom of your screen and you can also sign up for E-News, which gives you timely updates on a variety of our transportation projects and topics. So I'd like to thank you, Commissioner Peary and Kim Schultz, for being our guests on the Transportation Café show, a show by the RTC on local transportation projects and programs. We invite you to get involved in regional transportation planning. A few of the many ways are listed on the screen. Your comments and ideas on future topics for this show are always welcome. And thank you for tuning in to RTC's Transportation Café. Hello, I'm Grace Blakesley, a transportation planner at the Regional Transportation Commission, with an update on the development of the next Santa Cruz County regional transportation plan. As the state-designated Regional Transportation Planning Agency for Santa Cruz County, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, or RTC, is responsible for developing, implementing, and regularly updating the state-mandated long-range transportation plan for the region. The RTP includes goals and policies that are used to prioritize projects for funding. It also identifies the area's transportation needs and plan projects and estimates the amount of state, federal, and local funding that may be available over the next 25 years. On the last Transportation Café show, we talked in depth about the inclusion of sustainability principles in the next edition of the area's long-range regional transportation plan. This will maximize the benefits of transportation projects and programs for the triple win, the people, the environment, and the economy. You can view that show on the RTC website in the video library. The RTC recently conducted a web survey asking the public about their priorities for incorporating sustainable principles into transportation planning. Of the 200 survey participants, the following three goals were rated most important out of the 14 goals when planning for a sustainable transportation system. First, improve people's ability to meet most of their daily needs without having to drive. Improve the convenience and quality of trips, especially for walk, bicycle, transit, carpool, and vanpool trips. And improve access and proximity to employment centers. The RTC will be considering draft goals and policies for the long-range transportation plan this spring. We'd like to invite you to a public workshop on April 19th at 6.30 p.m. at the Live Oak Senior Center to learn more about the goals and policies being considered and to provide your input. Additional information on the next RTP is available on the long-term planning page of the RTC's website. Hello. My name is Matt Liao, and I work at the San Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, or RTC. I'm here to share some information about a bicycle parking subsidy program called Bike Secure. The RTC offers free bike racks or subsidies towards the purchase of bike lockers. Applicants only cover the cost of installation. The program is funded by Grant through the Monterey Bay Unified Air Pollution Control District, and will expire early next year. Apply now. Take advantage of this highly successful program that has provided over 2,000 bicycle parking spaces throughout Santa Cruz County. Major destinations that need bicycle parking can qualify, for example, businesses, schools, medical office buildings, and mixed-use developments. This program has been instrumental in reducing the need for car parking in activity centers, and at the same time promotes good health and well-being. By providing more secure places to park bikes, riders can feel comfortable in knowing that their bikes are safe. Having the proper facilities will allow more users to enjoy the benefits of this sustainable mode of transportation.