Highway planning coastside, Half Moon Bay

Half Moon Bay Review/Matthew Hansen, Special, 10/17/13.  "HMB residents dream of safer Highway 1."

"....  Residents of eastern Half Moon Bay are reminded every day that the two-lane road bisects their lives. Without a traffic signal nearby, and with no sidewalks or pedestrian paths on their side of the road, the Garritys and neighbors have no way to safely navigate chores on foot.

Half Moon Bay Highway 1 problems
more complicated than ours?
Still plenty of opposition to fix. 

....  Twenty-five of the 131 injury accidents on Highway 1 in San Mateo County occurred in Half Moon Bay, according to 2011 data collected by the Transportation Injury Mapping System within the University of California, Berkeley’s, Safe Transportation Research and Education Center. One of these incidents involved a pedestrian and two involved bicyclists. More recent figures were not available.

....  For her part, Fisher is concerned civic divisiveness will rear its head again. “Often, nothing happens here until somebody gets sued,” she said. “That’s what we don’t want to happen on Highway 1. Now that we have kids from three neighborhoods walking the highway, we need to come up with a plan and implement it immediately.

Veterans of highway planning efforts say that while they can be lengthy and contentious, such processes can also produce results. Len Erickson, who lives to the north of Half Moon Bay in El Granada, helped lead a Highway 1 “citizens committee” that advised San Mateo County on safety issues in 2011. “This is a long-haul process. It took 10 years just to put marks in the sand,” he said."   Read article.

Reference - UC Transportation Injury Mapping system (TIMS), Its not necessary to register, but you may.  The tools section includes interactive maps, and data, available information including San Mateo County (and our cities) through 2011, as well as California Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) information (and data from 2003-2010).  The collection of data may be useful for some forms of research. 

Note:  photograph from  San Mateo County  "Highway 1 safety and mobility improvement study" 4/2010, 62 pages.

Posted by Kathy Meeh