Foothill Blvd -- panacea or pipe dream?
For at least as long as the town of Half Moon Bay has existed, streets and subdivisions outlined on survey maps from the turn of the last century have shaped its growth.
The city of Half Moon Bay was incorporated in 1959, and the city founders were ambitious that it should grow and prosper from the start. Along with San Mateo County planners, they envisioned as many as 100,000 people living from Half Moon Bay up through Montara. After all, the lots already existed—it was just a matter of linking them to the road network.
What is Foothill Blvd?
It was clear from the start that Highway 1 could not carry all of the traffic these planned houses would generate. By the early 70s, new roads were drawn on the subdivision map to help stem the foreseen traffic burden. Foothill Blvd was born this way, as a drawing exercise.
Its designation as a boulevard meant that it would be a four-lane road — possibly divided — intended as a bypass to Highway 1. When the planners put Foothill on the map in the early 70s, there were no commuting problems along Highway 92. There was not even a stoplight at the intersection of highways 1 and 92, and none envisioned for other Coastside intersections—certainly not for Foothill and 92.
Where is Foothill Blvd?
Driving west on Highway 92 in the last half-mile before the Main Street intersection, you’ll pass a brushy hillside on the right that ends abruptly at a driveway next to an opening framed by two rows of mature eucalyptus trees (a few feet further west is the goat farm).
The proposed Foothill Blvd begins at that spot and runs due north between the trees, along the foot of the steep hill behind the high school, past a riparian habitat with willows directly behind the school, and then through a ravine and up across meadows near the planned Pacific Ridge development above Terrace Ave. It continues north along the foothills all the way across Frenchman’s Creek, and ties into Young Ave.
How expensive is it, and who pays for it?
Foothill is entirely within Half Moon Bay’s jurisdiction, and is the city’s responsibility to build and maintain: the county or the state would have nothing to do with funding this road. The city in turn would require that developers with planned developments along Foothill pay for it.
The engineering report of a couple of years ago showed a $13 million cost for creating a signalized intersection at Highway 92 and the portion of road just to Pacific Ridge (above Terrace Ave). The current city council negotiated with the Pacific Ridge developer to reduce the number of houses from 212 to 126, and again to 63 to reduce the traffic impact (as well as other infrastructure and environmental concerns), but the lower number of houses makes it unfeasible to spread out the high cost of Foothill Blvd.
Our development-minded friends advocate the full-blown version of Foothill. Forget about what hundreds of extra vehicles would add to the commute, and leave aside the problems with regulatory agencies and the wetlands. The grading required over the hilly terrain, and cost of building a fourlane road along with the multimillion dollar bridge over Frenchman’s Creek promise extraordinary expense—$70 to $100 million for the whole project is not an unreasonable estimate. There are not enough planned units between Pacific Ridge and Frenchman’s Creek to support the total cost, even if every one of the original planned houses were built.
Usually developers attach projects to existing roads and highways, to avoid the cost of building new ones from scratch. If developers were willing to foot Foothill’s bill, Half Moon Bay would still be responsible for maintaining Foothill to state highway- level standards (because it’s a bypass), which would cost more than maintaining all of its existing roads now. That cost would be borne by Half Moon Bay’s existing homeowners.
A cure-all for whom?
The $13 million dollar estimate for the portion from Pacific Ridge to 92 is already dated, and is likely to grow. The estimate is also problematic because it fails to take into account the removal and stabilization of the massive hillside on Foothill’s eastern side near 92.
Besides Foothill’s expense, its darkest shadow falls over traffic flow during commute hours on Highway 92. Foothill requires a signalized intersection a quarter mile east of Main Street, and would impact the morning and evening commute periods. Imagine driving on eastbound 92 at 7:15 on Tuesday morning: just having passed Main Street you are impeded by yet another stoplight that allows northern neighbors (fed from Terrace—see below) to turn east onto 92. It’s difficult to imagine the backup getting worse than it is now, but it would.
Some Terrace Ave residents believe that building Foothill would provide proper access to Pacific Ridge, relieving Terrace of the burden of Pacific Ridge traffic. The problem is that Pacific Ridge cannot be legally blocked off from Terrace (think fire safety), nor could east or northbound drivers seeking to avoid downtown traffic be prevented from cutting through Terrace (many now use Terrace to access the high school during commute times to avoid the downtown snarl.) So Foothill would mean more, not less, traffic through Terrace.
Who promotes Foothill Blvd, and why?
The Half Moon Bay Review, and past politicians like Helen Bedesem, Jerry Donovan, and Naomi Patridge (during her long tenure on the city council), and recently those mavens of infrastructure build-out, Ken Jones and James Larimer, are all Foothill boosters. They contend that large-scale development will benefit the public by providing improvements to infrastructure that the public is unwilling to fund,
In an ironic twist, as booster promote the idea, the developers have lost interest in Foothill as a viable option because of its inordinate cost.