Rail Sticker Shock—Where do we go from here?
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History of Our Fight Against Hwy 1
Part I:
Defunding the Plan for an 8-Lane Hwy 1
In a New Yorker article in 1955, Lewis Mumford wrote about “the remarkable manner in which new roads create new traffic”. CFST co-founder Peter Scott referred to Mumford in his guest editorial in the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 1998 opposing highway widening. By that time there was a growing body of empirical study that demonstrated that in areas of pent-up demand for travel, newly expanded highways fill up with traffic after a relatively short period of time. This phenomenon is knows as “induced travel”. (A contributor to pent-up demand is a job center in an area of expensive housing where workers are willing to “drive until you qualify” for a home loan.)
There is no better example of our human capacity to hold contradictory beliefs simultaneously than our views on highway expansion. Everyone understands that if expanding highways reduced congestion, LA would be a driver’s paradise. Yet when we’re stuck in commuter traffic, we think, “If only there were an additional lane.”
Twenty-five years ago the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) had yet to let the reality of induced travel guide their investment priorities. In 2003 the RTC started the environmental review of a project to expand Hwy 1 to 8 lanes between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. The project would build an HOV lane (carpool/bus lane) and auxiliary lane (exit-only lane) in each direction. In 2004 the RTC placed a sales tax Measure J on the ballot that would have directed 63% of proceeds towards the HOV Lane Project. Sierra Club and CFST activist Debbie Bulger wrote a rebuttal to County Supervisor Ellen Pirie, an advocate of HOV lanes, “The hard, cold truth is that building another lane will just enable more people to sit in traffic. It’s not what we want to hear, but it is the truth that most politicians do not have the courage to tell their constituents.”
Measure J needed 2/3rds majority to pass. It won only 43% of votes, losing in every jurisdiction in the county. Perhaps voters understood better than their leaders the futility of highway widening to relieve congestion.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) wrote to the RTC in 2010 stating that it would not continue to fund the environmental review of the HOV Lane Project unless the RTC had a plan for how to fund the project. George Dondero, the RTC Executive Director at the time wrote the Feds a response in 2011 asserting, “Santa Cruz County can reasonably be expected to pass a sales tax measure to fund the Highway 1 HOV lanes project.” After the Measure J debacle, the Feds weren’t persuaded by Dondero’s confidence. In June, 2011, the FHWA sent an email to the RTC staff, confirming their judgment that the HOV lane project was not financially feasible. “FHWA has determined the Highway 1 HOV Project does not have sufficient funds to cover the $503 Million HOV Lane Alternative.”
The RTC employed a technical maneuver to keep the environmental review funding. But Dondero’s promise that “full project funding” would be accomplished by a local sales tax measure in 2014 never came to pass. Instead, the RTC abandoned the effort to fund the HOV Lane Project. The RTC put together a sales tax ballot measure in 2016 that included 22% of funds for auxiliary lanes on Hwy 1.
CFST History Part II:
Fighting the Auxiliary Lanes
The defeat of the highway tax in 2004 meant that the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) had no way to fund the expansion to 8 lanes, which would have required demolishing and rebuilding all the overpasses from Santa Cruz to Freedom Blvd. But the loud message from the voters did not dissuade the RTC from pursuing highway expansion in the form of auxiliary lanes (exit-only lanes).
The Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for expanding Hwy 1 was released in 2015. The EIR examined the alternative to the 8-lane project: adding auxiliary lanes and ramp meters on the 11 mile stretch of Hwy 1. The EIR concluded this alternative “would result in a very slight improvement in traffic congestion when compared to the No Build Alternative.”
The EIR also concluded that there would be no safety benefit from adding auxiliary lanes. “The total accident rates overall and by segment in 2035 would be the same as the accident rates for the No Build Alternative.”
Without the hope for meaningful congestion relief or improved safety, why did the RTC devote 22% of the sales tax Measure D in 2016 to building auxiliary lanes? When I asked that question to a member of the RTC, he replied, “Because South County commissioners hope the auxiliary lanes will be a step toward the bigger project.”
There were other commissioners who were no fans of highway expansion, but who believed that for Measure D to pass “there needs to be something for Hwy 1 commuters”. The impression that “something is being done” was meant to win the votes of irritated commuters stuck in traffic, even if the Caltrans’ EIR predicted the “something” would be ineffective. Perhaps this is why the RTC never held a hearing to discuss the conclusions of the 2015 Draft EIR.
The public was not clamoring for auxiliary lanes as the solution to congestion on Hwy 1. In a poll done before Measure D was drafted, 75% of respondents thought relieving congestion on Hwy 1 was very important. But only 49% of respondents thought that it was very important to “add auxiliary lanes to reduce cut-though traffic on local streets.” This support for auxiliary lanes would have been smaller had the poll question honestly reported that cut-through traffic would not be reduced. The EIR’s concluded that auxiliary lanes and ramp meters “would not achieve sufficient congestion relief to attract any substantial number of vehicles that had diverted to the local street system back to the freeway.”
CFST wrote the the RTC in December, 2015, “Clearly, a ballot measure that describes funding auxiliary lanes for purported “congestion relief” would be seriously misleading.” Nevertheless, just before Measure D was officially placed on the ballot, the RTC spent over $100,000 on a mailer to all Santa Cruz County voters promising that the upcoming measure would relieve traffic congestion on Hwy 1.
Measure D passed, partially funding auxiliary lanes from Santa Cruz to State Park Dr. Subsequently, the California Transportation Commission approved a grant for the auxiliary lanes, perhaps persuaded by the description that the project included “bus-on-shoulder”. Everywhere that bus-on-shoulder exists it consists of a bus-only lane on the shoulder of a highway. The sole bus-only lanes in the Santa Cruz project are short segments (painted red) at each interchange. CFST has persisted in calling attention to the gap between the RTC’s label, “bus on shoulder”, and the reality that a bus-only lane in lieu of auxiliary lanes was never even studied.
After receiving the state grant, the RTC realized it didn’t need to spend all of its Measure D highway allocation on the aux lanes between Santa Cruz and State Park Dr. The RTC voted to amend the Measure D Expenditure Plan to add auxiliary lanes from State Park to Freedom Blvd. This high cost of this segment (over $200 million) is due to the need to rebuild bridges over 2 creeks, two railroad bridges, and purchase property through eminent domain, including the stretch of redwoods that are slated for demolition.
CFST and the local Sierra Club are suing Caltrans and the RTC to stop this segment of auxiliary lanes. We need another $5K to pay our attorney. It’s a good investment in offering our leaders an offramp from a futile and expensive strategy. Please help by donating online or by check to check to Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, PO Box 7927, Santa Cruz, CA 95061
-Rick Longinotti
Requiem for a Public Square
By Rick Longinotti
The great towns of the world have gathering spaces at their center. The public squares in Monterey and Watsonville are a legacy of this Spanish version. Throughout the years there have been efforts to create a public plaza in Santa Cruz. The popular Abbott Square is the closest approximation to a public square in the heart of Downtown. The square is appropriately named for Chuck Abbott, whose advocacy for a “Downtown Oasis” resulted in the Pacific Garden Mall, turning Pacific Ave. into a meandering one-way street amid shade trees and brick planter boxes that provided plenty of seating. (Sentinel 9/11/18)
Every Wednesday afternoon, the City’s parking lot #4 has transformed into a de facto public plaza hosting the Farmers Market under the grand magnolia trees. The imminent demise of this public space traces back to December 2016 when City staff proposed a 5 story 640 space parking garage with a new library as a ground-floor tenant.
This was an about-face from the direction the City was headed just six months earlier when the City contracted Nelson\Nygaard to consult on parking Downtown. The consultant practiced the parking management principles pioneered by Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking.
Why the reversal? In June 2016 voters passed a library tax. The City Manager at the time wanted to leave a legacy library. He knew the tax was insufficient to build a new library. But sharing construction costs with a parking garage made the project seem feasible.
The contract with Nelson\Nygaard called for the consultant to present its findings to the City Council. That presentation never happened. That may be explained because the report did not recommend a new garage. Instead, it recommended a number of parking management strategies to make better use of existing parking.
In 2019 the City Council voted 4-3 (over staff opposition) to implement one of those strategies: bus passes for all workers Downtown. Also against staff opposition, the Council invited Patrick Siegman, formerly of Nelson\Nygaard, to speak to the Council on his study of parking in the Downtown. Siegman told the Council that the annual parking census showed a steady decline in parking Downtown, in line with the experience of cities nationwide, due to telecommuting, Uber/Lyft, and online retail.. “Santa Cruz has a parking management problem, not a parking supply problem,” stated Siegman. At the same study session, UCSC professor and parking researcher Adam Millard Ball told the Council, “It’s cheaper to pay commuters not to drive than to build more parking.”
In 2018 the consultant, Economic Planning Systems, analyzed City staff projections for paying debt on the garage and reported that the staff model “does not evaluate a worst-case scenario (for parking revenues) where a major recession occurs or a technological change (and pricing) substantially reduces parking demand.”
The consultant’s warning didn’t take long to prove accurate. In 2020 the pandemic hit. Parking revenues plummeted. Recovery has been slow. The Parking District has run a deficit every year since the pandemic. Nevertheless, at their meeting on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 meeting the City Council approved 30 year bond debt to build the garage.
By approving the 30 year bond debt the City Council is betting that neither recessions nor robotaxis, nor tele-commuting, nor online retail will slow parking revenue. If the bet is mistaken, the City’s General Fund is on the hook for the annual debt payments. When I called the Council’s attention to that fact, the Mayor asked the Finance Director if that was true. She affirmed that it was.
Facing the need to win public support, City staff repeatedly reduced the proposed parking in order to add affordable housing. The final version includes 243 parking spaces and 124 units of affordable housing.
As Downtown business owner Curt Simmons warned in a Sentinel guest editorial (April 28, 2020), the Parking District faces a possible downward spiral. If revenues don’t meet expenditures, the City will likely raise parking rates, which reduces demand for parking, which reduces revenue (not to mention its impact on businesses). Trust in local government faces a possible downward spiral too. If voters discover the City’s gamble was unwise, will they vote to tax themselves to support City tax measures? The lost opportunity for a town square under the magnolias might not be the only casualty of the parking garage.
Rick Longinotti is chair of the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation
For the back story on Nelson\Nygaard’s conflict with the City, see “An Honest Consultant”
Expanding Hwy 1 would axe over 1,100 trees
