Dear Friends & Neighbors,
For those of us who have lived in northern Monterey County for many years, we can recall when San Miguel Canyon/Hall/Elkhorn/Salinas Roads, also known as the G-12 corridor, was a rather sleepy array of country roads. Traffic congestion was virtually nonexistent.
All that changed in 2012 when the Salinas Road overpass at Highway 1 opened. Traffic that backed up on Highway 1 through Castroville to Salinas now had another route. Commuters quickly adjusted to using the G-12 corridor as a faster route. The change has been significant for all those who live in North County or travel here for work and business. Add in the congestion on Highway 101 and 156 during commuter hours and during the tourist season, and the disruption to all residents in District 2 is significant and frustrating.
It could be worse. In 2020, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) released a climate resiliency report with proposals to deal with the expected seawater rise that will eventually flood Highway 1. One of the three proposals under consideration was to make the G-12 corridor four lanes and move Highway 1 traffic onto it. Mercifully, that idea was never seriously considered. Estimates have been as high as $1 billion to construct that monstrosity.
But we are left with a huge traffic problem. Most of us who live in North County try to avoid that commuter rush in the mornings and afternoons whenever possible. Then, during the weekends, when tourists are flocking to the Monterey Peninsula, we try to avoid the highway congestion caused by out-of-towners. North County is truly the gateway to Monterey County, but the gate is not wide enough for everyone to pass comfortably.
Can something be done to address this congestion? The good news is yes. The bad news is that Monterey County has little it can do as most of the congestion stems from the highways and that is primarily under the state and federal governments’ direction to plan, fund and build. We have been waiting since the 1950s to make Highway 1 a four-lane highway through Moss Landing. We’ll be lucky to get that by 2050 unless climate change causes significant disruptions with rising sea levels and moves Highway 1 up the funding list.
It has been since the 1960s that roadwork to ease the congestion on Highway 156 has been proposed. The long-awaited Highway 156 Interchange at Castroville Boulevard has faced delays as well, but it is not dead. Other plans have been proposed to improve Highway 156, but nothing is as firm as the Interchange yet.
Monterey County does have plans for the G-12 corridor. Some of that will start on Salinas Road near Pajaro in the next year or two. While there might be some benefit so that we have fewer bottlenecks when all this is completed, it will not ease congestion in any meaningful way. There is no way that the county can ease congestion until the highways are expanded to handle more traffic. If the county finds a way to make traffic flow faster on G-12, then traffic that goes an alternative route to Salinas or the other way into Santa Cruz County will transition to the G-12 corridor until the gridlock is equalized everywhere.
All of us want to get to a destination as soon as possible. If we find a route that is consistently 5 minutes faster, then we switch our route to that alternative. So does everyone else until all the routes to the same destination are at an equilibrium with the same travel time. Until the state and federal government make our local highways a priority for funding, all the county can do is make travel safer. That does include improving our many rural roads that are increasingly used to avoid congestion. Fortunately, millions of dollars have been added to the road fund in the last year. The Board of Supervisors has made road improvements a priority in our budget discussions. It is a priority that I fully support.
As always, don't hesitate to reach out to my office for assistance. You can reach us at 831-755-5022 or district2@countyofmonterey.gov.
Sincerely,
Glenn Church
District 2 Supervisor
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