Living with the ‘Aptos Strangler’: Will Highway 1 construction fix traffic?

Maybe Socrates was onto something when he said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” But, in my case, I steadfastly hope there is at least one part of my life that remains unexamined. That’s how much of my precious lifespan I’ve spent sitting in a car on California State Route 1. Whatever that number is — and, trust me, I really don’t want to know — I’m betting that cumulatively it can be expressed in years by now.

I have been regularly driving Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and Watsonville, in both directions, for almost 3½ decades. I’m convinced that, on an otherwise empty road at 3 a.m., I could drive the route blindfolded. (Note to the California Highway Patrol: That’s a joke.)

And I’m not the only one obliged to take the trip every day … which, of course, is the crux of the problem of Highway 1.

Traffic congestion has never not been an issue in my many years as a commuter. But the problem has only spread and shifted in recent years. Seeing a river of brake lights on a morning drive from Watsonville to Santa Cruz when you haven’t even passed La Selva Beach is enough to make you curse all that is holy and to forsake the faith of your ancestors … or at least do some serious Socratic life-examining.

For almost two years now, Highway 1 has been undergoing a slow transformation, an ambitious three-phase plan by Caltrans and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) that has created a gauntlet of construction obstacles for commuters. Within the close to 100,000 vehicles that use Highway 1 each day, there is likely a wide range of understanding on just exactly what is going on with all this construction. A few make a point to follow the issue closely, maybe even attend an RTC meeting or two. But for most, the questions remain:

Wait, what exactly is happening on Highway 1? When will it be done? And, most importantly, will it help me get from Point A to Point B any faster or more easily?

What is this thing?

The important numbers on the project, cost and time frame, are daunting — cost estimates go northward of $150 million, and the final phase will probably not be finished until 2030. And even the most optimistic projections claim that any easing of congestion along the Highway 1 corridor will likely be temporary. Some in the community consider it a wrong-headed boondoggle. Still, project supporters at the RTC say that focusing solely on congestion is the wrong question, that the project is to redesign the county’s transit environment, not just for commuters, but for bus travelers, bicyclists and even pedestrians. And it’s laying the groundwork for the equally ambitious plan to provide rail transportation across the county.

The project as a whole is known as the Auxiliary Lane/Bus on Shoulder project, which is already a bit confusing. It does, in fact, do what county planners have been resisting for decades: add a third lane of traffic on Highway 1 in both directions. But that third lane comes with a big asterisk that requires some explaining. An auxiliary lane is a right-hand lane that connects only to the next off-ramp and doesn’t allow for through traffic. The lane from Morrissey Boulevard to Soquel Drive on southbound Highway 1 is a good example of an auxiliary lane. A bus-on-shoulder lane is a right-hand lane dedicated solely to buses or public transport vehicles. What’s happening in Santa Cruz County is a hybrid of the two approaches, an auxiliary lane that allows buses — and buses only — to continue on through the interchanges. Cars and trucks are free to use the new lane, but will have to merge left through the interchanges.

You won’t see anything like this design in California, because bus-on-shoulder lanes are not allowed in the state. But a 2013 Assembly bill changed all that, allowing bus-on-shoulder lanes in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties only. After a feasibility study and negotiations with Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol, Santa Cruz County decided to take advantage of the bus-on-shoulder concept.

“We already had a program of projects that were under development,” said the RTC’s executive director, Sarah Christensen, “so we just took the bus-on-shoulder elements and added it to our project.”

The phases

The project is divided into phases, each one of which has its own budget, timeline and challenges. Phase 1 is between the Soquel Drive interchange and the 41st Avenue interchange, and includes the bicycle/pedestrian bridge at Chanticleer Avenue. Phase 1, said Christensen, will be finished at some point in the fall, though the Chanticleer bridge will be open to cyclists and walkers as soon as May.

Phase 2 continues between Bay Avenue/Porter Street to the State Park Drive exit in Aptos. This phase includes two yet-to-be constructed bridges over the freeway, at Capitola Avenue and Mar Vista Drive. Phase 2 will likely be completed by the end of 2026. Phase 3, between State Park Drive and Freedom Boulevard, has not yet started, and is, in fact, not yet funded. The county applied for a grant to fund the project last fall, and won’t hear on whether the grant application was successful until the summer. 

The highway project’s local funding comes by way of Measure D, a half-cent sales tax passed by a two-thirds majority of county voters in 2016. Improvements on Highway 1 were only one of five areas of transportation projects earmarked for Measure D funds, which also included money for rail service, local trails and bicycle paths, Metro buses and neighborhood street projects. 

At least one local group, the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, is mobilizing to stop Phase 3. While accepting that Phases 1 and 2 are already underway and thus unstoppable, the group has filed suit against Caltrans and the RTC, through the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process. 

Rick Longinotti, the leader of CST effort, cited the loss of some trees if the project goes forward, pointed to deceptive messaging in the campaign to pass Measure D, and claimed that the project’s draft environmental impact report was incomplete. But, primarily, he said, “we’re suing because widening highways doesn’t work to reduce congestion.”

So, will it work, or won’t it?

One of the country’s most massive freeways is the Katy Freeway (Interstate 10) in Houston, Texas. Counting its feeder lanes and restricted lanes, the Katy Freeway features a mind-numbing 26 lanes. That lane count is a result of an expansion in the 2000s, which cost around $2.8 billion. The expansion reduced travel times for Houston’s commuters dramatically, until it didn’t.

Katy is but one example of what’s called in the transit industry “induced demand.” That’s the concept that any increase in supply (highway lane capacity) will sooner or later be met by a corresponding increase in demand (cars on the road). Relief from choked congestion will be only temporary, a few years at best, until the newly widened roads become as clogged as the old ones. And, though expanded highways means more people using a public resource, which is the whole point of public resources, it’s also a validation of car culture, even a denial that single-occupancy cars are at the heart of the problem of traffic. 

Even if you’re aware of the phenomenon of induced demand and how it could lead to waste and even more frustration, as a commuter, you might be willing to support highway expansion, if only for the temporary relief. Congestion has a purpose. It creates a disincentive to drive.

Jarrett Walker is a well-known transit planning consultant and author of the book “Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives.” 

When he was an undergraduate in Los Angeles nearly 40 years ago, Walker told me, L.A. traffic was so bad, there was a widespread assumption that some day, the city’s freeways were going to reach absolute paralysis and just stop cold. How many movies, TV shows and music videos from that era portrayed L.A. roads as a honking mass of parked cars stretching into the horizon? 

“The point is, that never actually happens,” Walker said. “And today, traffic in Los Angeles is just about as bad as it was 40 years ago. You continue to have traffic at a terrible level that people complain about all the time, but never a total gridlock. 

“So the moral of that story is that there is a level of congestion that people object to, and then there’s a much higher level of congestion that they tolerate, but it never goes above that level. Because if it goes above that level, they just stop driving. They change their lives in whatever way they need to, so they don’t have to drive on that road anymore.”

Transit experts and public officials will often flinch at the idea that their goal is to get people out of their cars and into other modes of transportation. It smacks of “social engineering,” and politically can spark backlash. They would much rather talk about offering commuters options. 

“We can’t make you do it,” said Mike Rotkin, a member of the RTC, on people’s choice to drive a car and reluctance to look at alternatives. “We want you to choose to do this freely.”

Cars are convenience machines, and their many advantages create a pronounced barrier to consider public transit of any kind because it means conforming to the dictates of schedules and stops. 

Rotkin is skeptical of the wisdom of expanding lanes to make it easier to drive. But he supports the RTC’s plans because they are “multi-modal,” in that the project has design elements that promote travel by bus, bicycle, foot and, one day, rail. He said that the RTC’s plan is to some day make all county bus travel free, with a possible measure on the ballot in 2026. (The Highway 1 project coincides with Santa Cruz Metro’s plan to put more than 50 new hydrogen-powered buses on local roads.)

Focusing solely on the effect of the new highway plan on drivers overlooks the new pedestrian bridges over the freeway designed to make it easier for cyclists and walkers to cross Highway 1, and for those who ride the bus, who now have to sit in traffic with everyone else. 

The “Aptos Strangler”

In Santa Cruz County, geography offers yet another restriction on smooth traffic flow on Highway 1. As anyone who commutes long distances on Highway 1 can tell you, traffic in Aptos and Rio Del Mar can be especially vexing. 

Consultant Walker has visited Santa Cruz several times and has spoken at RTC public events. In examining Highway 1, he came up with a nickname to describe the phenomenon of Mid County traffic snarls: the “Aptos Strangler.”

“You can circle a little area of less than a square mile,” he said, “through which must pass all available east-west roads, and Highway 1 — as well as the rail line, and all the infrastructure and all the potential space for infrastructure that you have to connect the county — it all goes through that very small choke point. A choke point is a place where many paths of travel converge, so that what you do at that point affects huge numbers of people. So I called it the ‘Aptos Strangler,’ because any solution to your problems is going to have to work there.”

The RTC looks at the Highway 1 project as its best effort at serving all its constituencies — drivers, bus riders, cyclists, pedestrians, those who might one day choose rail. As for commuters by car, the new Highway 1 might be a better and quicker drive. But it could also be the opposite. The hybrid auxiliary lane/bus on shoulder approach means that drivers will have to learn new habits — when to get out of the auxiliary lane and how to deal with new signage and possibly metering lights. 

Whatever advantages that higher capacity brings could very well evaporate in a few years. But that by time, the RTC is betting that bus and rail options might be more attractive, and new housing designs won’t require as much travel. 

These plans are the result of both transit professionals and community activists taking action in a democratic process that includes everyone from resentful drivers who’ve had it with congestion and demand a solution, even it’s temporary, to those who think catering to drivers at all in this time of climate change is foolhardy and want the money spent on highways to be used for other purposes. 

Still, said Walker, if a community is serious about lightening traffic and creating incentives about alternative transportation, there’s always toll roads. Those, however, are a political third rail.

“The problem, of course, is that before you do that,” he said, “lots of people scream, and politicians can’t necessarily always handle the screaming. And they have to decide how much screaming they want to sit through.”

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