Impact of inaction

Case in point is the Waters Park development which seeks to replace a 100,000-square-foot office park with 190 for-sale residences right at State Route 92 and Highway 101. The development was approved by the San Mateo City Council Feb. 19.

Opponents pointed to possible traffic impacts of any new development. There were privacy concerns, but really, the worry was traffic. Studies showed that traffic would be reduced, but some locals weren’t buying it. If you live at ground zero for cut-through traffic and elected officials haven’t done anything about it — or the root cause which is Highway 101/State Route 92 — then you may not be so keen on believing them now.

And that’s one of the issues. Cut-through traffic is a real concern. Look at Foster City. One might suggest that the housing opposition forces in that city are solely rooted in the amount of traffic that flows through looking to make it onto State Route 92. There is a pilot program in the works to stem the cut-through traffic, and we will see how it goes. However, it is obvious that this pilot program is a Band-Aid to the real solution which is to fix the State Route 92/Highway 101 interchange.

This interchange was not a number one priority during a campaign to add a half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements and the main effort by transportation officials for the past year has been the Managed Lanes project which seeks to add a toll lane to Highway 101 — as if that is the panacea.

The priorities of our transportation officials are having real impacts. Caltrain electrification and the Dumbarton corridor study are great, but there would be less opposition to new housing if there were not traffic problems on surface streets caused by inaction on this key interchange. I’ve said this before, but it doesn’t take a traffic engineer to figure out that you need additional lanes. Granted, the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge is still three lanes in each direction, but work on the interchange will stretch it out and determine a better flow.

There are studies on the improvements underway right now, but they are slow going and have definitely not been a priority. In fact, one might sense that by the time the improvements are studied, identified and funded, construction might be done in time for the next economic cycle.

Either way, it’s too bad. The dysfunctional interchange causes real trouble. It adds insult to injury to those who work here and are priced out of the housing market, it causes stress for those stuck in traffic day in and day out, it creates real headaches for locals affected by spillover and cut-through traffic, it spurs crowds of people to show up at meetings expressing concern about housing developments and it causes more greenhouse gases from idling cars.

Government priorities have impacts and putting off real solutions causes exacerbating and manifold problems.

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We knew this was coming but ... it appears that Trag’s Market in downtown San Mateo has a fairly firm closure date of March 30. A call over to the market all but confirmed it but suppose something could change. But its days are numbered either way as the city approved in January a four- and five-story mixed-use development at the 303 Baldwin Ave. site of nearly 1 acre next to the train station. The new development will have 64 residential units, 60,000 square feet of office space and about 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

Trag’s has been a downtown anchor for more than 40 years and it will be strange to look at that prime area without it.

Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @jonmays.