Coast Highway (Old US 101) Oceanside

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https://www.ci.oceanside.ca.us/gov/dev/chvs/

The city of Oceanside has approved the Coast Highway Vision and Strategic Plan. This plan includes, among other things, a road diet to reduce the number of lanes in exchange for dedicated bicycle lanes in a half-mile section known locally as the "dip." This change, which was recently implemented along Coast Highway, has made the news:

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/land-use/oceanside-road-diet-tests-citys-new-transportation-vision/

(T)he project is the result of years of studies and planning from Oceanside, and was part of a study on a future road design that began in 2013. It's being treated as a pilot project that will let the city study how road diets work, to see if they're viable for the rest of Coast Highway.

The city might not have much discretion over making more changes like the one at the dip, however.

For one, the city in 2009 adopted a plan called the "Coast Highway Vision,"  which broadly calls for streets that are safe and enjoyable for drivers, transit riders, cyclists and pedestrians.

Plus, new rules under the California Environmental Quality Act that will take effect next year will make it increasingly difficult for cities to redesign roads in urban areas without implementing pedestrian and bicycle amenities.

Together, those two factors bind the city to a broader scope than simply looking at how long people have to wait at traffic lights.

Then there's money — the San Diego Association of Governments provides grants to cities that undertake smart-growth projects. Oceanside can compete for those grants to implement the rest of the Coast Highway Vision, but it wouldn't be available for simple repaving that maintains it as a four-lane road.

It's looking like the end of the road for the car-only highway.

The city is measuring the results of its road diet not only on Coast Highway, but also on Pacific Street, the only street that can be used to bypass the dip.

David DiPierro, a traffic engineer with the city, said it will track three metrics: volume, speed and journey.

Volume and speed are traditional measures of traffic impact, which effectively look at congestion: how many cars are on the road, and how quickly are they moving through an area.

The city will run its volume and speed observations through an algorithm to determine how much the change contributed to congestion. It may ultimately find the road diet has a negative effect, Oceanside transportation planner John Amberson said.

The third metric, "journey,"  tracks whether a particular vehicle chooses an alternate route to get around an area. It tracks a car using an anonymous identifier tied to the car's Bluetooth system.

That will help determine whether cars are taking a longer but potentially quicker route around the road.

But pending changes to CEQA, the state's premier environmental law, will further complicate how the city evaluates its pilot study. The changes are expected to take effect just as the city completes an environmental report on the project.

CEQA in 2017 will adopt a new metric for looking at how a project affects drivers. A draft of the proposal explains that cities will instead be asked to measure the distance cars travel due to a project, rather than looking at how much congestion results from a project.

If the rules are in effect first, the city will have to revise its traffic models, and redo its study to reflect the different measurement, Amberson said.

The state's shift to measuring  vehicle miles traveled  hasn't been finalized, but the draft proposal makes a few assumptions about how road diets would affect traffic.