The Almanac
May 25, 2005

EDITORIAL:
Tunnel a landmark
in saving the Coastside

"The process does work."

With those words, Senator Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, summed up 50 years of contention over the future of the San Mateo County Coastside. She was speaking at a groundbreaking party for a tunnel to bypass the infamous section of Highway 1 that keeps falling into the ocean around Devil's Slide between Montara, north of Half Moon Bay, and Pacifica.

The decision to build a tunnel -- instead of slashing a freeway bypass through Montara Mountain -- is the culmination of a process that totally reversed the vision of the future of the Coastside. That process deserves recognition because it illustrates how public activism can change political plans. And because it contains lessons for preserving the unmatched resources of the Coastside into the future.

In the 1960s, the county's master plan called for a city of more than 100,000 around Half Moon Bay, served by a freeway down the coast, and several across the county. Caltrans was planning a four-lane freeway -- ultimately eight-lane -- through Montara Mountain; it was to be built to bypass the beautiful but unstable two-lane highway clinging to Devil's Slide.

By 1971, Caltrans had bought right-of-way and was about to go to bid and start building. What happened?

A lot of things happened. Olive Mayer of Woodside and the Sierra Club brought suit and blocked the bypass. Peninsula conservationists, including Lennie Roberts and the Committee for Green Foothills, rallied to fight an array of logging, water, highway, and development projects in the mountains and on the Coastside.

At the same time, the environmental movement swept California and the nation. New people with new attitudes -- Congressman Pete McCloskey, for one -- penetrated legislatures and shook up government. They passed new laws protecting air, water, and critters; and requiring studies of the environmental effects of new projects.

California also passed new laws. In 1972 voters throughout the state passed Proposition 20, proclaiming the California coast a precious resource to be nurtured, and establishing the Coastal Commission -- headed at first by Mel Lane of Atherton -- to guard it.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the environmental movement on the Peninsula matured, with more organization and more grass-roots action. Governments, from local to national, became involved. And new agencies were born.

Especially important for saving the coast were the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, a special-purpose government formed in 1972 to acquire and manage open space; and the Peninsula Open Space Trust, a private land trust based in Menlo Park, which has purchased over 40,000 acres, including large tracts on the Coastside.

The battle of the bypass blazed off and on through the 1980s -- occasionally stoked when the old highway slid out, forcing commuters to back up on Highway 92.

Besides the old-guard environmentalists, a dynamic, younger group sprouted on the Coastside, fighting the bypass, development and sprawl. By the 1990s the idea of a tunnel, which was first proposed in the early 1970s but stonewalled by Caltrans, resurfaced -- just as the old road slid out once more.

In 1996, a countywide vote produced a 74 percent landslide for the tunnel -- two bores with one lane each -- and the project was launched for real. When the two-lane tunnel opens in 2011, it will provide safe access to the Coastside without swamping it with freeway-scale traffic and the development it spawns.

Yet, challenges still remain to preserving the Coastside as the resource it is. Nowhere else in the world is there such a jewel of open space, forest and agriculture in a metropolitan area within a day's drive of 7 million people.

With the tunnel, the Coastside will never become Daly City South, with wall-to-wall subdivisions. But it could still sprawl south from Half Moon Bay. The rural south coast could become a checkerboard of large estates dominated by trophy homes, which squeeze out farms.

So, the Coastside isn't fully saved yet. We need to protect more land, support agriculture, keep the land in good health and encourage compatible uses. This is a daunting task. It will take vigilance, persistence, energy, and money from a lot of people, organizations, and agencies for the Coastside to fulfill its possibilities.

Let's keep the process working.

Page last updated September 13, 2010 .