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| Highway 92 project was right turn on road to progress Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 2:01 PM PDT If good things come to those who wait, the just-completed widening of Highway 92 and accompanying reconfiguration of Main Street must be a very good thing indeed. Half Moon Bay’s most ambitious road project in recent memory has been in the works for more than a decade. It’s been pared down, expanded, revised, redrawn and worked over. In the end, state and federal funding paid for much of it, though that was in doubt for a long time as budget woes in Sacramento seemed to threaten the project with each passing construction season. Predictably, there were those on the coast who sought to delay and derail the project. Because, for some, any attempt to ease traffic congestion is an invitation to squalid development. Even more reasonable folk were dubious of how a couple of lanes added for a few hundred feet could make much of a difference. But it seems to help, now that it’s finished. The extra roadway pushes the bottleneck east and away from Highway 92’s intersections with Highway 1 and Main Street. Now the merge seems to be more or less seamless heading out of town for the morning commute. And there is no question traffic on Main Street is improved — on both the north and south sides of Highway 92. Just as important, the corridor is beginning to look like the gateway to the beautiful area it serves. Putting the utilities underground relieved the eyesore and allows drivers and passengers to see the mountains and the green hills and the horizon above the ocean. When crews took out all those leaning pines, it left a hole for a while. Now the corridor has been replanted with (admittedly small) Monterey cypress. The new lighting is a vast improvement. And last month city officials promised to do a more even job of enforcing sign rules, which should cut down on the clutter that has long made the entrance to the city look more like a flea market than a thriving beach town. It’s been a long road, so to speak. Project manager Bill Carlson told the Review last year that, “It’s one of these jobs that just isn’t going to look pretty until it’s done.” He wasn’t kidding. But now that the work is done, city officials — past and present — have earned the bow they took Tuesday during ceremonies along the roadside. The widening of Highway 92 was a victory over those narrow-minded Coastsiders who said it couldn’t be done. — Clay Lambert |