San Francisco Chronicle
September 17, 2007

Devil’s Slide tunnel gets started at last

by Michael Cabanatuan

Thirty-six years after she sued Caltrans to stop a controversial bypass around Devil’s Slide, a Peninsula environmentalist climbed behind the controls of a huge excavating machine Monday morning and began digging what will be the state’s longest highway tunnel.

Lennie Roberts, who played a key role in fighting the bypass and pushing instead for a tunnel, extended the long arm of the special excavator and spun the studded wheel at its end, taking the first bite out of the rocky hillside.

Lennie Roberts operates excavator at Devil’s Slide tunnel site

“That was a kick in the pants,” she said afterward. “It was very satisfying.”

The real satisfaction, however, won’t come until late 2010 when the long-awaited Devil’s Slide tunnel is scheduled to open to traffic, providing drivers a safer, more reliable link between Pacifica and the rest of the San Mateo County coastal communities.

Rockslides, mudslides and slumping have plagued the precarious stretch of Highway 1, which soars above the Pacific Ocean, almost since it opened in 1937. The highway has been closed at Devil’s Slide at least a dozen times, forcing drivers to take long, slow detours on Highway 92 to Interstate 280 and shutting off the flow of business to coast-side hotels and restaurants. Storm damage in 2006 closed the highway for four months. A 1995 closure lasted more than five months.

The real digging begins today, according to Caltrans officials, and will proceed nearly nonstop until the tunnel is completed. Using excavating equipment imported from Austria instead of a tunnel-boring machine, contractor Kiewit Pacific, moving south to north, will excavate a pair of 4,200-foot tunnels, each 30 feet wide and 22 feet high.

Each tunnel will carry a single lane of traffic and will feature emergency walkways and shoulders on either side. A jet-fan ventilation system will expel exhaust and keep the air in the tunnels fresh.

Construction of the tunnel is budgeted for $272 million, but the entire project — including graceful bridges across a canyon at Shamrock Ranch on the north and a highway realignment and operations center on the south — will cost $330 million. Work on the project began in 2005, but the folks who fought for a tunnel instead of a highway were waiting for the digging to start.

About 200 people attended the ceremony in the fog near the tunnels’ south portal Monday morning, listening to speeches and witnessing Roberts rip a chunk out of the concrete that covers what will become the tunnel entrance. The covering — built to stabilize the face of San Pedro Mountain — was marked with two fluorescent orange outlines to show the future tunnel openings.

Some of those who attended the event — and a party afterward at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company (which sells a “Tunnel Vision” ale) — had fought Caltrans’ plans for a bypass, fearing that the proposed six-lane route through the coastal hills would open undeveloped areas of the coast to widespread development. Many of the onlookers had worked to pass Measure T — a 1996 San Mateo County initiative approved with 74 percent of the vote, ensuring that a tunnel would be constructed.

During that campaign, bumper stickers bearing the words “Think Tunnel” showed up around the Bay Area. On Monday, several people sported stickers proclaiming “Build tunnel — We can dig it.” One sticker was slapped on the shiny yellow excavator.

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said the tunnel is an example of the public will prevailing over bureaucracy.

“This is about a community that felt it knew better,” he said.

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, surprised Roberts by calling her to the podium and telling her she would start the hole through the mountain. As a leader in the push for a tunnel, he said, she deserved the honor.

“This will be the people’s tunnel,” he proclaimed.

Roberts, who lives in Portola Valley, agreed. She’s active in the Committee for Green Foothills, which sued Caltrans in 1971 to halt plans to build a bypass around Devil’s Slide.

“It was a very long battle,” she said, “But now we will have a safe and reliable solution to this problem that is not a six-lane freeway.”

Online resources:
Caltrans information on the Devil’s Slide project: links.sfgate.com/ZVQ
View photos from the tunnel supporters: www.tunnel.org
Committee for Green Foothills: www.greenfoothills.org

E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.

Page last updated September 20, 2007 .