Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission gets approval for Highway 1 projects
UPDATE 1/03/19 6:30 p.m. The environmental impact and assessment reports for several projects on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County have been approved.
It’s no secret there’s a congestion problem on Highway 1, “my sister is living just south of Aptos and getting to her house can take an hour in the evening. So it’s not fun,” says Carlos Oberg.
Resident Randy Braun has lived in the County for decades and says traffic continues to get worse, “I worked many years commuting Highway 17 but now to see it here on highway one is pretty unbelievable.”
The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission says they’re trying to change that. “We are working hard at getting these improvements implemented, hopefully with this mile stone complete it’s going to open up a lot of possibilities with implementing more projects on the Corridor,” says project manager with the SCCRTC Sarah Christensen.
They now have the okay to move forward with two projects, one is auxiliary lanes between Soquel Drive and 41st Avenue, Christensen says, “when you enter the freeway you have your own lane and that lane exit at the next exit, so it gives people more time to merge and it just improve operations by a lot.”
And the second is a bicycle and pedestrian crossing at Chanticleer Avenue. Something resident Melissa Berstein is onboard with, “you can actually have a bike and use that for commuting on a regular basis and then when you want to have a car you can rent a car or you can access lift or Uber so I think creating conditions where people can ride their bikes safely is a terrific idea.”
They also plan to eventually add HOV lanes to the Highway 1 corridor, but say that will not happen for awhile.
The projects are aimed to help traffic congestion in the area and give commuters more safe route options.
“”We utilized measure D funds earlier this year to advance the final design phase of the auxiliary lanes between sequel and 41st and the Chanticleer bridge so the design, the final design of that project is underway and that could start construction as soon as 2020,” says Christensen.
For more details on the project you can click here.
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The environmental impact and assessment reports for several projects on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County have been approved.
The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission can now move forward with the auxiliary lanes project between Soquel Drive and 41st Avenue along with the bicycle and pedestrian crossing at Chanticleer Avenue.
They also plan to eventually add HOV lanes to the Highway 1 corridor.
The projects are aimed to help traffic congestion in the area and give commuters more safe route options.
For more details on the project you can click here.
KION’s Ashley Keehn will have more tonight at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.
