I have to hand it to Redwood City: it just received a $14.2 million state grant that serves as the final bit of funding needed to pay for the US-101/Woodside Road Interchange Project. The city, in conjunction with Caltrans, has been working on this project since before 2014, when the city first announced the project’s existence. Although the bulk of the work will be done by Caltrans (Highway 101 and Woodside Road — SR 84 — both being the responsibility of the state), Redwood City had a number of tasks it was required to perform, one being to line up funding, and another to obtain the various bits of right-of-way needed to accommodate the new design.

This project, if you aren’t familiar, will revamp the on- and off-ramps to Highway 101 from Woodside Road, as well as make changes to Veterans Boulevard, Broadway, Bay Road, Chestnut Street, Blomquist Street, E. Bayshore Road (south of Seaport Boulevard) and Woodside Road/Seaport Boulevard. It will also create a new, dedicated bike path that would slip beneath the highway close to (but a safe distance from) the freight rail line that today runs down Chestnut Street and out to the port alongside Seaport Boulevard. All together, this project should greatly improve traffic flows in the vicinity of the interchange. And not just for cars: it should greatly improve the ability to cycle throughout the area, as well as make many more parts of the area walkable (something I am particularly excited about).

The project website has a lot of good information; for those who want to dive into the details. But here is a nice image from that website that summarizes the entire project:

[You’ll definitely want to click on the above and zoom in on it!]

This project has been in design since 2017, and it has gone through some major changes since then. Currently it is in the final design phase, and should soon go to the bid phase, where contractors bid on the job. The plan is to commence work in 2027, and complete it by 2030. Whatever the final dates actually turn out to be, with the project in the final stages of design, the preliminary design shown in the above image should be pretty much what we’re getting.

As Redwood City residents well know, the current Highway 101/Woodside Road interchange is a complex one, and one that has its share of issues. For instance, vehicles heading northbound on Highway 101 and exiting at Woodside Road are first faced with the choice of going either west towards Woodside Road, or east towards Seaport Boulevard. Assuming that they keep left towards Woodside, they then find themselves in a right-turn-only lane that heads up Veterans Boulevard; if they want to actually get onto Woodside Road (as most vehicles seem to do), they have just a short distance to shift at least one lane to the left.

Southbound highway traffic often backs up for a long way up the highway, triggering some spectacularly dangerous last-minute merges from impatient drivers. This is exacerbated somewhat by the fact that if you want to exit the highway and head east towards Seaport Boulevard, you nevertheless are expected to wait in that long line of cars, nearly all of which are heading towards Woodside Road: the exit is a single traffic lane that only makes the east/west split after that traffic lane has physically separated from the highway. And as for those cars that are indeed heading westbound, they find themselves merging with Woodside Road right at that street’s intersection with Broadway, having sailed right over Veterans Boulevard. Thus, whereas northbound traffic has the option to turn onto either Veterans Boulevard or Broadway (or stay on Woodside Road), southbound traffic does not have that first option.

There’s more, of course, but I presume that you get the idea: this interchange and the streets nearby are a mess, which becomes quite evident to anyone trying to head through the area during commute hours. As for cyclists and pedestrians, as things currently stand the entire area is a no-no; except for along Broadway there are essentially no sidewalks and no bike lanes (and anyone cycling along this part of Woodside Road would be taking their life in their hands). Thus, the need for a substantial project to clean things up.

First and foremost, in the new plan that single southbound exit lane that causes so many backups would become a pair of exit lanes. And instead of them then splitting, one east and one west, they would fan out first to three lanes and then to five (two left-turn-only, three right-turn-only) that together would meet Woodside Road at right angles where Veterans Boulevard meets it today. As for Veterans Boulevard, it would no longer meet Woodside Road at all, but instead would “fly over” that street and merge directly with Highway 101. Thus, Veterans Boulevard south of Chestnut Street would be a dedicated freeway onramp (for southbound traffic) and offramp (for northbound freeway traffic). Northbound traffic wanting to use either Woodside Road or Seaport Boulevard would no longer use a flyover, but instead would simply come to a “T” intersection with Woodside Road just east of the freeway; they would then turn left to head along Woodside Road, or turn right to make their way down Seaport Boulevard.

These and other changes would go a long way towards smoothing out the issues for cars and trucks. As for pedestrians and cyclists, not only does the plan show new crosswalks and bike lanes alongside Woodside Road out to Blomquist Street, but, more intriguingly, the project would also add a dedicated bike path (that would, I hope, also accommodate pedestrians) that would slip beneath the freeway just south of the train tracks that serve the Port of Redwood City. This new pathway would connect the Broadway and Woodside Road intersection with the one at Blomquist Street and Seaport Boulevard, as well as with the one at Veterans Boulevard and Chestnut Street — all with no street or rail crossings (OK, bikes would still need to cross the tracks at Chestnut Street — but at that point they would no longer be on a dedicated pathway).

In addition to the interchange itself, Broadway and Woodside Road would also see some changes. For instance, both streets would gain additional width — and additional lanes — where they meet (Woodside Road’s extra width would carry all the way to Spring Street). Thus, this project is going to require some bits of land alongside those streets. Fortunately, although a number of private properties are going to have to sell some of their land to the city, most of what they are giving up doesn’t appear to be land that they are making much use of. Take the Jack in the Box restaurant along Broadway, for example:

It appears that they need only sell off that narrow dirt strip between the sidewalk and the drive-thru lane you see in the above photo. (Oddly, the next-door Denny’s restaurant doesn’t need to surrender any of its land). The brand-new CVS at Bay and Woodside roads likely just needs to sell off some of the landscaped strip between the sidewalk and its parking lot, while the next-door Smart & Final gets away nearly scot-free, having only to give up a tiny bit of their street corner:

The parking lot in front of the post office may tighten up just a bit, but I don’t believe that their operations will be affected in any way. Really, it seems that the two properties most affected are the 24-Hour Fitness, which will have to give up some of its parking along the freeway side of their lot (costing them a dozen or so spaces, as far as I can tell), and the city’s “Municipal Service Center” (the parcel bounded by Broadway, Chestnut Street, Veterans Boulevard, and Woodside Road). Its lovely green lawn along its Broadway frontage will get a bit narrower, for one thing:

The real changes, however, will be in the back, along the Veterans Boulevard side of the property. There, where the city parks a number of its vehicles and stores materials used by its Public Works department, the city will be surrendering a chunk of sufficient size that the city may be forced to reconfigure a permanent structure or two (not having actually been back there, I can only go by the preliminary plan plus more recent satellite photos of the area). Fortunately, because the city already owns this parcel, it doesn’t have to pay anyone for the privilege of handing over a portion of its land for this project.

I should note that this project is not all take, take, take: technically, it gives as well. For instance, today, vehicles at the intersection of Seaport Boulevard and Blomquist Street wanting to get onto Highway 101 northbound have a dedicated onramp. This project will eliminate that onramp, freeing up that bit of land (that, admittedly, is in a spot that likely will never get used for anything). With the removal of the northbound exit flyover to Woodside Road and Seaport Boulevard, some bits of land there, too, will be freed up. And the southbound exit loop that takes traffic east towards Seaport Boulevard will also be removed, freeing up yet more land. Of course, all of these bits are in and among the remaining and new traffic lanes, and thus will likely see nothing more than landscaping. With one exception:

In the above, which is a blown-up portion of the preliminary project plan, Highway 101 is across the top, the new southbound exit ramp (largely in red) is peeling off from it (and terminating at Woodside Road, in purple along the right edge of the image), and the new route for Veterans Boulevard can be seen in red and bright green just above the bottom edge of the image. The areas marked in light green mesh are the bits of existing infrastructure being removed, and thus freed up for other potential uses. But see that narrow magenta path that zig-zags through the image? That’s the new “class IV” bikeway: a fully separate (from traffic) bike path that will run along either side of Veterans Boulevard (and beneath it, where Veterans raises up to fly over Woodside Road), extend down alongside Woodside Road to Broadway, and, as you can see, run beneath both the new southbound offramp and Highway 101, ultimately extending to Blomquist Street. This new bikeway is the one place where some of what is being demolished — in this case, a segment of today’s Veterans Boulevard — will actually be redeveloped with something other than just landscaping.

This project is going to take a handful of years to construct, and undoubtedly will cause a lot of inconvenience during that period. However, the results should be terrific: not only should vehicles find it much easier to get on and off the freeway at Woodside Road, but the added bike and pedestrian lanes/paths are going to finally make this an area that one can traverse on foot or by bicycle. (I’ve barely mentioned walking in this post; I’m guessing that the bike paths may be open to pedestrians as well, given that they feed into some new — marked in blue — sidewalks, but I have not yet confirmed that.)

This project has already been more than a decade in the making, and has at least another five years to go. But with the money in hand, the plans nearly complete, and the city currently negotiating with property owners for the necessary bits of right-of-way, it seems that this project really is going to proceed. And so I have to once again give the city a great deal of credit for persisting. Now I look forward to both the construction process and the final result.