As the project to tackle Highway 101 traffic heading south from San Luis Obispo gets closer to fruition, one Pismo Beach City Council member believes part of the plan is “unacceptable.”
Mayor Pro Tempore Mary Ann Reiss is worried about the height of the median barrier obscuring views of the Pacific coast.
“It’s not going to be raised at all, right? Because it’s too high now,” she said after an update on the project at the Nov. 15 City Council meeting.
Spanning from San Luis Bay Drive to the railroad overpass just south of Price Canyon Road, the project would widen the inside shoulder of Highway 101 into a part-time travel lane from 2 to 7 p.m. on weekdays and realign the southbound lanes to veer around Pismo Rock (an indigenous cultural resource). Plans would also establish a park-and-ride hub with zero-emission charging stations at Price Street and Maddie Road and extend the Shell Beach shared use path to Avila Beach Drive for pedestrians and bicyclists. The Five Cities Multimodal Transportation Network Enhancement Project released its final environmental impact report in August.
Concrete barriers separating the north and southbound lanes that are “touched by the project” will gain about 10 inches of height due to federal safety requirements, CalTrans Project Manager Paul Valadao said. He told council members on Nov. 15 that due to vehicles getting taller, the Federal Highway Administration currently mandates that barriers be at least 42 inches tall to prevent them from being “overtopped by errant vehicles.”
“It’s unacceptable now, so I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Reiss responded.
Projects that don’t abide by federal guidelines, Valadao added, can lose government funding.
Expected to cost about $85 million, the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments (SLOCOG) has allocated approximately $20 million to the project’s development phases and is awaiting the results of two applications for Senate Bill 1 funding from the California Transportation Commission. Totaling a little more than $65 million, SLOCOG Transportation Planner Stephen Hanamaikai said they expect to get answers next June. CalTrans and SLOCOG are also working on a coastal development permit application.
When completed, it would be the second stretch of roadway in California with a part-time travel lane on the inside shoulder of a highway. In April 2018, Interstate 580 in the Bay Area opened a part-time lane heading east over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Part-time travel lanes are so new to the state that the California Vehicle Code currently “prohibits general purpose travel on the shoulder of state highways,” according to the Five Cities environmental impact report.
“Therefore, the project is being proposed as a pilot project during its initial seven years of operation, after which Caltrans would pursue legislative approval to make the part-time travel lane a permanent feature,” the report states. “If approval is not granted, the part-time travel lane would likely be reverted to one 14-foot-wide full-time shoulder.”
Valadao told New Times that the lanes have been successfully implemented on I-70 in Colorado as well as a few places in the Northeast.
“So we are fully engaged with our federal counterparts,” he said, referring the the Federal Highway Administration. “It’s been really cool to work with them directly.”
A red x or green arrow would let commuters know when the lane is available for use, while a freeway service patrol would ensure the shoulder is clear prior to 2 p.m. Valadao said the patrol is a service that already exists today and is funded by SLOCOG. The lane would have signage similar to an HOV or carpool lane, and rules for use would be enforced by the California Highway Patrol and local law enforcement.
The truck travel lane that starts between San Luis Bay and Avila Beach drives will be “recycled” into the project, Valadao said.
“It doesn’t function very well,” Valadao said. “It causes a lot of havoc.”
Caltrans plans to take the existing pavement and use it to build out the part-time travel lane, something that should come as a relief to Pismo Beach City Councilmember Sheila Blake, who voiced her frustration with cars that use the truck travel lane to zoom around traffic.
“Can’t we station someone there with a nail strip so that when someone comes speeding down and they think ‘ah ha ha, I’m going to beat out all these other people’—couldn’t we do something to these people?” she said with a laugh during the Nov. 15 meeting. “No, I guess not.” Δ
This article appears in Nov 24 – Dec 4, 2022.