Mission town dead-set against widening, but objections go
unheeded
156: COG favors widening project
It was billed as
”
David Takes on Goliath
”
and rallied the town folk of San Juan Bautista to speak up
against the state’s plan to make Hwy. 156 a superhighway.
Mission town dead-set against widening, but objections go unheeded
156: COG favors widening project
It was billed as “David Takes on Goliath” and rallied the town folk of San Juan Bautista to speak up against the state’s plan to make Hwy. 156 a superhighway.
So said the press release put out last week by San Juan’s City Hall regarding a meeting in the Community Center with representatives of Caltrans District 5 – the arm of the agency concerned with traffic management in a five-county area of the Central Coast.
The meeting, according to those who attended, didn’t go so well. Caltrans officials made presentations of different options for the project – whittled from six alternatives to three – and showed detailed drawings on easels. It ended with several locals threatening lawsuits against the agency.
“It was really not a positive situation,” said Jan McClintock, City Manager of San Juan.
Caltrans has big plans to make Highway 156 – the two-lane road that runs roughly seven miles from The Alameda in San Juan to Union Road just west of Hollister, through acres of fertile farmland – into a four- to six-lane highway raised six feet above the ground. The plan calls for leaving the existing roadway as a frontage farm road and building a new superhighway on the right side of it from San Juan to Hollister, which would take out most of Mission RV Park and one of San Juan’s only three water wells.
“The good well,” McClintock said. “It would take out the one the city uses. The other two, one is used for ag irrigation and the other is high in nitrates.”
Workers going to and from work from Hollister and further inland to the coast use the main commuter artery, but for several years it has earned an “F” rating by Caltrans – the worst possible rating for safety and efficiency.
“It’s not just what’s going to happen to the (San Juan) Valley – it’s what’s going to happen to this entire county,” said Councilman George Dias, one of the most vocal opponents to the project. “Everything we do in this county is half-assed and 20 years behind the times.”
Dias, who also is one of five directors on the Council of Governments, the intergovernmental board that takes on transportation issues, is aligned with fellow COG director Anthony Botelho in opposing the widening. But the three other directors, Robbie Scattini, Pat Loe and Pauline Valdivia, have expressed their concern for making the corridor safer.
The only way Caltrans will consider halting the project is if COG is in a majority against it, Dias explained. He and Botelho would rather that Caltrans use the money for the proposed East-West Highway, also known as the 3-in-1 Highway, which would link up and widen highways 152 (Pacheco Pass), 25 and the northeastern part of 156.
In 2001 Caltrans was willing to pay for the widening of the same stretch between Hollister and San Juan but former Supervisor Richard Place, then a COG member, stopped the project.
Supervisor Loe says the project should have been dealt with years ago.
“Widening 25 isn’t going to address the problems on 156,” Loe said. “No matter what, at some point it has to be widened because of the growth in Hollister, even if we grow at 3 percent, 2 percent, even 1 percent.”
It is not known when a final decision will be made regarding the project, except that it is a long way off. Caltrans is still studying traffic numbers and has yet to complete an environmental impact report.
Calls made to Caltrans District 5 representatives were not returned before deadline.
“If this project goes in, this county is destroyed,” Dias added. “The developers will come in after that, and there will be nothing but development from the Santa Ana Mountains to the San Benito River.”
Dias and Botelho say that the worst traffic snarls on the highway occur only on Friday nights and holiday weekends because of people coming from the Central Valley who are traveling to the coast for their getaways, or vice versa. McClintock adds that the Valley Transportation Authority study used for this project was done before three colossal development projects, worth 11,000 homes in the north end of the county, came knocking on San Benito’s door.
“I say put it in the north end and get it out of the heart of the county, the Valley,” Dias said.
The City of Hollister may not be so accommodating since San Juan Bautista officially did not support the widening of Highway 25, when Hollister officials asked for that support several years ago.
Town activist Rebecca McGovern is also rallying against the project.
“It’s going to take all the farmland,” McGovern said. “The whole Valley’s gone.”
Loe said the suggested alternative Caltrans has offered would take up only 99 acres of land, and that a new road must be built in order to preserve the old school house on the road, now considered an historical landmark.
“They have to go around it,” Loe said. “And the existing road must be used for drainage.
“We can build it now and have the state pay for it, or build it later and we pay for it,” Loe added. “We should be sitting at the same table on this so we can speak in a united voice to Caltrans.”
