HalfMoonBayReview.com
September 20, 2007

Caltrans celebrates tunnel vision

By Clay Lambert [ clay@hmbreview.com ]

Calling it the beginning of the end, Caltrans officials put the first — albeit largely ceremonial — dent in Montara Mountain Monday, marking the spot where twin tunnels will one day render Devil’s Slide a thing of the past.

The hour-long ceremony attracted about 150 state and local dignitaries as well as ordinary citizens to a patch of dirt that will one day be the southern entrance to the 4,000-foot tunnels.

Lennie Roberts will go down in history not only as one of the prime proponents of the tunnel solution to recurring traffic nightmares brought by regular closures of the slide, but also as the person who scraped away the first bit of rock face where the tunneling will occur. The legislative advocate for the Committee for Green Foothills was asked to mount a big yellow earth mover then she drilled a fraction of an inch into Montara Mountain to the whoops of the crowd.

The real heavy lifting won’t start until the week of Oct. 7, said Caltrans spokesman John Cunliffe. That’s when enormous digging machines, imported from Austria, will begin their work in earnest. In the next few weeks, crews will be busy preparing for the dig. That work includes installing a canopy over the bull’s-eye to protect workers and passing motorists from falling rock.

U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos told the crowd Monday’s ceremony was a long time coming and symbolic of the many public works projects that, taken together, provide U.S. infrastructure. He noted that he was new to Congress in 1983, when bad weather caused a slide that shut the road for 84 days.

“This is an historic moment. You are part and parcel of a stream of Americans who gather together on occasions like this ... only to be appreciated in the stream of history,” he said. “There was a group of men and women who came together like this when the Golden Gate Bridge was commenced.”

The tunnel project is split into six contracts and includes mitigation for environmental concerns, construction of a maintenance center and both northbound and southbound tunnels. It is scheduled to be complete in December of 2010.

While most of the speaking was done by politicians on Monday — a group that also included California state Sen. Leland Yee and San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon — Lantos proclaimed the tunnel “the people’s project.” He and others noted that the tunnels would never have been plotted if not for Measure T in 1996 — a ballot measure that proved there was popular support for an alternative to a planned overland bypass.

Caltrans was initially hesitant to commit to tunnels at the site. The state transportation agency hasn’t commissioned a similar project since completing the Caldecott Tunnel in 1964.

“We are witnessing history,” said Bijan Sartipi, the Caltrans district director with responsibility over Devil’s Slide. “We are making history.”

Page last updated September 20, 2007.