SLO needs a new road across the middle of town. So when will it happen?
Anybody trying to cross San Luis Obispo between South Higuera Street and Broad Street knows the struggle: If you hope to get from one side of the city to another, your options are limited: South Street or Tank Farm Road.
For years, San Luis Obispo officials have planned to alleviate traffic on those roads and open a new corridor by extending Prado Road east across currently undeveloped land, effectively creating a new third option for traversing the city.
They’ve even made progress on some other longstanding upgrades with that road recently, chief among them settling on a preferred design for the long-awaited Highway 101 overpass that would connect Prado Road with the San Luis Ranch housing development off Madonna Road.
Even with headway being made on one end of the street, a Prado Road connection to Broad Street is still likely at least a decade away if not longer, San Luis Obispo’s transportation manager, Luke Schwartz, told The Tribune in a recent interview.
And it will likely only become a possibility if and when there is a more concerted push to develop land in that area, he said.
“That one, the timing of that is probably more dependent on the development activity on that side of town,” Schwartz said. “But we know that in order for new growth to happen there, we need the road extension to get built. So it’s kind of a chicken and egg, where we don’t have the resources to go advance the project right now, because we have other projects that are needed to get built first to accommodate it — but at the same time, we kind of also need some development interest to start happening in that area to make that all work out.”
Why SLO wants to extend Prado Road
San Luis Obispo has something of an issue when it comes to connecting routes across the city, largely due to topography and constraints set by Highway 101 and the railroad.
“If you just look at a map, there’s pretty limited continuous east-west corridors in the city,” Schwartz said.
On South Higuera Street, there’s a roughly 1.6-mile stretch between South Street and Tank Farm Road without a direct connection across. On Broad Street, it’s 1.7 miles.
That gap in cross-town access roads is due to San Luis Obispo’s South Hills Open Space and several large parcels of undeveloped land, according to Schwartz.
But that area is where “if you look at a map, that makes a lot of sense to add more capacity and kind of shorten people’s trips,” he said.
“When we look at our traffic models, it actually shortens the vehicle miles traveled throughout the city by extending that route, getting that connection in place, because it really shortens the distance that people need to go to get to get across town,” Schwartz said. “So what that does is it makes travel a lot more efficient, but it also relieves the traffic on some of our other streets that people are currently using.”
The land layout does makes it tricky to add new connector roads between the two main thoroughfares, however — especially without help from property owners.
“We’ve had conversations in the past with landowners and there hasn’t been interest on their ends in either, you know, selling easements for the roadway or in selling the property for development purposes at this time,” Schwartz said.
In a staff report in September, the city noted its General Plan Circulation Element includes the future extension of Prado Road to Broad Street, to “provide a continuous arterial route with separated bikeways and sidewalks between Broad Street (Highway 227), to Madonna Road via the Prado interchange.”
“While the city is collecting development impact fees to help fund this future infrastructure project, the ultimate timing of the Prado Road Extension is difficult to project,” the report said. “To date, the private property owners have not been interested in developing or selling this right-of-way to the city.”
According to the staff report, an extension of Prado Road would potentially cost $27 million.
Schwartz said the city collects transportation impact fees that would eventually help to pay for the extension, though they first go to transportation projects that are on the city’s priority list.
Those include the Highway 101 interchange project, as well as plans to replace a bridge at Prado Road and South Higuera Street and improve that intersection, Schwartz said.
“I’d say right now, probably for the next 10 years or so, the majority of the funds we’re collecting through that program are going to make sure those project get built,” he said. “Those kind of need to be in place before (Prado Road) gets extended. We can’t extend the road and have all this new traffic getting added to that corridor. ... Those existing facilities there can’t handle it.”
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