Ford Motor Co. is just two years away from offering technology that will allow drivers to take their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel, according to Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley.

“We’re getting really close,” Farley said in a May 31 interview with Bloomberg TV’s David Westin. “We can do it now pretty regularly with a prototype, but doing it in a cost-effective way is just the progress we’re going to need to make.”

Farley believes Ford can make that progress quickly enough to be offering the feature in 2026, which could make it the first mass market car brand to offer what auto engineers call Level 3 autonomy. That’s where the car takes over the driving task under certain conditions, enabling the driver to divert their attention to other tasks.

“Level 3 autonomy will allow you to go hands and eyes off the road on the highway in a couple years so then your car becomes like an office,” Farley said. “You could do a conference call and all sorts of stuff.”

Ford and other automakers, including General Motors Co., currently offer hands-free driving features, but those use eye tracking devices to make sure the driver remains focused on the road ahead. Ford’s system, called BlueCruise, is currently under investigation by US safety regulators after being involved in fatal crashes. Tesla Inc. and others are also being probed by federal authorities for crashes involving their semi-autonomous systems.

Farley’s prediction comes less than two years after Ford shut down its autonomous affiliate, Argo AI, because it said achieving full self-driving was too far off.

Mercedes-Benz late last year began offering an eyes-off-the-road feature in the US, but it only operates at speeds below 40 miles per hour on pre-approved freeways.

Farley suggested Ford’s system would operate at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour on the highway, but only under clear skies.

“We only think we can do it on sunny days,” Farley said. “Heavy rain and stuff makes it difficult to do it at 80 miles an hour.”

Ford is eager to generate recurring revenue by offering its drivers subscription services to features such as BlueCruise. Farley sees those high-margin software services smoothing out the boom-and-bust cycles in the car business.

Ford already is selling software systems to its commercial customers to manage the logistics of their fleets. Farley sees semi-autonomous features like eyes-off-the-road driving as a way to get indivdiual retail customers to buy software subscriptions.

“BlueCruise has been so much more popular than we expected, which is hands free,” Farley said. “It’s kind of the step before you get to eyes off.”

___

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The third and wettest wave of the atmospheric river is expected to arrive in the Bay Area on Saturday night, the National Weather Service said.

The updating radar map above shows areas of precipitation in green, with greater intensities indicated by yellow and orange.

A flood watch is in effect in the Bay Area from 4 p.m. Saturday until 10 a.m. Monday.

In the Lake Tahoe area, a winter storm warning is in effect from 10 p.m. Saturday until 10 a.m. Monday, with 3 to 5 feet of snow forecast above 7,000 feet elevation.  Updates on road closures and chain controls can be found on CalTrans’ website or mobile app or by calling (800) 427-7623.

The fatal accident saw Japan Airlines flight 516 crash into the coast guard aircraft after touching down on the runway on Tuesday, causing it to erupt into a terrifying fireball.

All 379 people on the Japan Airlines (JAL) plane were safely evacuated. Five of the six crew members on the smaller coast guard aircraft died, according to Japanese transport minister Tetsuo Saito.

Saito on Wednesday released the transcript of more than four minutes of communications between air traffic controllers and the two planes immediately before the accident, which indicates the Japan Airlines flight had been given permission to land.

Air traffic control gave the JAL passenger plane permission to land on Runway C at 5:43:26 p.m. local time (3:43:26 a.m. ET), according to the transcript.

However, the transcript does not show clear takeoff approval for the coast guard aircraft, instead telling it to “taxi to holding point” at 5:45:11 p.m. (3:45:11 a.m. ET). The crew of the coast guard plane confirmed the instruction seconds later, according to the transcript.

About two minutes later, the JAL flight collided with the coast guard plane on the runway, according to the timestamp on airport surveillance video.

Transport Secretary Saito told reporters Wednesday that the incident is “still being investigated” and the next step will be to listen to the audio recording of the conversation between the coast guard pilot and flight control tower.

He added that the transport ministry is taking every precaution to prevent such an accident from occurring again, saying the ministry had “told airlines and air traffic control agencies to implement basic operations and procedures thoroughly.”

In a briefing following Saito’s press conference, officials from the Japan Transportation Safety Board (JTSB) said they had retrieved the flight and voice recorders of the coast guard aircraft. However, they added that they were still looking for those of the JAL plane.

A JTBS official told reporters that the air traffic controller cleared the JAL plane to land on runway C and instructed the coast guard aircraft “to hold point.”

The release of the transcript comes after Japan Airlines said in a statement late Tuesday that its crew had been cleared to land by air traffic control prior to the collision.

Audio from LiveATC.net appears to detail the crew reading back a clearance order for runway 34, saying “cleared to land 34 right.”

Japan Airlines has pledged its full cooperation in the investigation to determine responsibility for the deadly crash.

Passengers who were onboard the Japan Airlines plane, an Airbus A350, as well as witnesses to the collision have described terror giving way to relief as it became clear everyone onboard survived.

Incredibly, Japan Airlines said only one person on board its plane received bruises, but 13 “requested medical consultation due to physical discomfort.”

Runway incursions, as incidents of this type are classed, are “rare but can be catastrophic,” according to Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at the UK’s Cranfield University.

CNN’s Helen Regan, Pete Muntean and Lauren Koenig contributed reporting.

The-CNN-Wire & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

Gary Richards, aka Mr. Roadshow, began covering traffic and transportation in the Bay Area in 1992. Scroll down for some of his most memorable columns.

Are you frustrated with wonky metering lights, “road boulders” in express lanes or just wondering when that terrible stretch of Highway 101 will finally be repaved? Email your questions to mrroadshow@bayareanewsgroup.com and find his latest columns for The Mercury News here and for the East Bay Times here.

Mr. Roadshow also has a newsletter. MercuryNews.com readers can sign up for that and other newsletters we offer here. EastBayTimes.com readers can do that here.

Now, on to his favorite columns from the Roadshow archive:

Dressing on the freeway and other bad driver stunts

Being thankful for the kindness and heroism in others

When the Sunol Grade replaced the Bay Bridge as the worst traffic jam in the Bay Area

A look back at the highlights and low points of Roadshow’s first 20 years

The Prius Party of 2011, featuring Steve Wozniak and plenty of yellow stickers

But officer, I can explain: Drivers’ traffic-violation excuses

How the Serra rest stop went from wasteland to wonderful

A bed of flowers puts the brakes on Highway 85 commute

The Highway 85 tragedy that spurred safety changes across California

Crazed by your commute? There’s always Bismarck

Countless billions of public and private dollars were committed to upgrading the ports to handle ever-larger container ships, erecting dozens of warehouses and other facilities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, and improving rail and highway corridors linking them to the ports.

In macro terms, it paid off.

As shipment of goods from Asia — particularly China — blossomed, the twin ports eventually claimed as much as 40% of the nation’s import traffic and logistics became, by some measures, Southern California’s largest single generator of employment. It propped up the region’s economy when another mainstay, aerospace, plummeted three decades ago after the Cold War ended.

That said, the industry may have peaked. Factors such as the enlargement of the Panama Canal, the emergence of India and other nations as suppliers of goods, congestion in the twin ports and transportation corridors, labor conflicts, and growing local opposition to the environmental impacts of logistics pose potentially existential threats.

Recently, West Coast ports finally settled a long-running conflict with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union with a new six-year contract. However, during the dispute, wildcat work stoppages had tied up traffic through the twin ports and some shippers moved their business to East Coast and Gulf ports.The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association says that the twin ports saw import volumes decline by nearly 25% in the first six months of 2023, not only due to labor unrest but a sharp downturn in the Chinese economy.

Gene Seroka, the Port of Los Angeles executive director, told the Wall Street Journal that retrieving the business “will be an uphill climb. Our job now is to be absolutely relentless in going after every pound of freight possible.”

The machinery of logistics — ships to trucks to locomotives — produces tons of particulate emissions. They and the warehouses they serve also create traffic congestion and noise and over time the physical presence of logistics breeds resentment that, in turn, morphs into political and legal action.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has steadily ramped up pressure on the industry to reduce polluting emissions by electrifying trucks and other equipment. The demands impose costs that, industry leaders say, make the region less competitive with alternatives, particularly East Coast and Gulf of Mexico ports.

The SCAQMD is now on the verge of issuing an overall draft rule to limit pollution from the ports and last month, labor and management officials and a variety of business organizations sent letters to the mayors of Los Angeles and Long Beach raising alarm about what they regard as a potentially fatal blow to the ports’ long-term viability.

“The initial SCAQMD staff proposal essentially establishes volume caps on port activities, which will restrict the delivery of critical imported goods including essential construction, manufacturing, and automobile components, as well as medical supplies and halt the export of California’s manufactured goods and agricultural products to foreign markets,” the coalition told the mayors.

In August, as details of the proposed rule leaked out, the state Assembly’s Select Committee on Ports and Goods Movement staged a hearing in which legislators decried the potential economic impact.

Southern California may have made a mistake when it put so many of its economic eggs in the logistics basket but it is now a test case whether California can manage the potentially immense economic fallout from converting itself into a net-zero emission society, as Gov. Gavin Newsom and other political figures pledge to do.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

My wife and I recently celebrated our 10-year anniversary with a trip to Key West, Fla. The vacation itself was fabulous.

And then we spent an entire day and night (and half the next day) sitting in three different airports over a 29-hour span enduring one exasperating delay after another, a stretch interrupted only by lousy food, heartburn and, you guessed it, lost luggage.

We dropped off our rental car at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in plenty of time for our 2 p.m. flight home. With one connection, we were expecting to arrive in Sacramento just nine hours later and thus get home well before midnight local time.

Yeah, right.

First, our flight got pushed back to 2:15. Then it was delayed until around 3:30 and eventually until well after 5. There were a few thunderstorms in the area (common for this time of year), but the excuses we were getting from American Airlines ranged from “weather” to “unavailable flight crew” to “sorry, that pilot can’t work any more hours today” to finally — and I’m not kidding — “Our incoming flight had to land in Palm Beach because it was running out of fuel.”

After five delays, I went to the ticket counter and asked if there was a quicker way to Sacramento than the one we’d planned, which was a connecting flight in Charlotte. The guy behind the counter told me to go through Dallas, because “even if we have to bring in another plane, there will be a flight to Dallas tonight.”

Sounded good to me. We re-booked for Dallas, and our flight was set for 7:30 p.m. Before we even made it back to our seats in the terminal, it got delayed to 7:49. Minutes later it got pushed back to 8:09. That continued for hours: Every 45 minutes or so they’d announce another delay, eventually pushing our flight back to around midnight.

I went to plead my case to a different guy. He looked past me with an oddly vacant stare and said, “This is getting worse every day.” (Apparently, it had been a tough week for the ticketing crew at American Airlines.) He did tell me to check with American in Dallas, assuming we ever got there — “They’ll get you a hotel room for the night, and they won’t let me do it here because they’re afraid people who get the rooms won’t actually show up to use them.”

Ten hours after we were supposed to take off, we finally boarded a plane. We arrived in Dallas at 2 a.m. local time. I didn’t see anyone from American Airlines waiting around with a hotel voucher, so we decided to make a night of it right there in the airport.

As it turned out, our adventure was just beginning.

As the sun was coming up, I glanced at my American Airlines app and was only slightly surprised to discover that our luggage was still back in Florida. Not only that, they’d already given our four suitcases (and my guitar) a ride to North Carolina and back on the connecting flight we were originally going to take.

In other words, our luggage had already spent more time on an airplane than we had despite 18 consecutive hours of earnest attempts.

We finally arrived in Sacramento at noon local time, a full 27 hours after we first checked in at Fort Lauderdale. Our luggage — by now, no doubt, a member of the frequent flier club in its own right — arrived a mere two hours after us.

As soon as we got home, I took a shower, changed the clothes I’d been wearing for 37 hours and wrote what I thought was a very powerful letter to American requesting some reasonable compensation for the past couple of days. Seems fair, right?

Two days later, they emailed me an “apology” along with a credit for an upcoming flight worth (drumroll please) 25 bucks!

I could go on. But the rest of our vacation was so fantastic, it really was still worth all of that trouble at the end, which I’m sharing with you only in the interest of camaraderie — because lousy service from king-sized corporations just might be the last thing that still unites us as a country these days.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record. Reach him at mwolcott@chicoer.com.

In an effort to replicate the lot’s previous success helping close 10 encampments and significantly reducing the footprint of RVs parked along municipal roadways, the city’s Homeless Services Panel of Experts recommended in February that the Berkeley City Council expedite efforts to find another location — complete with mandatory safety inspections and fire extinguishers — that could support RV dwellers’ legal right to shelter in their vehicles.

But two major roadblocks stand in the way: no money within the city’s coffers has been earmarked yet for this project, and available land that could host RVs is scarce.

Carole Marasovic, chair of the Homeless Services Panel of Experts, said that while the objective of an RV lot has always been to provide residents temporary reprieve during their search for permanent housing, it’s difficult to secure those projects.

Overnight parking lots force RV dwellers to find parking elsewhere during the day, and creating full-time programs on city-owned or faith-based organizations’ properties aren’t easy solutions, either, as they require ongoing management, hygiene services and on-sight maintenance.

Money could be set aside for another RV lot from Measure P, a property transfer tax which voters approved in 2018 to help support homeless support services through 2028, but that would need to be approved in the upcoming year’s budget process.

Additionally, that pot of funds is projecting “serious structural deficiencies” over the last 5 years of the measure’s lifespan, according to city documents, and new shelter programs that have better opportunities to secure state funding — including a vision for a Super 8 on University Avenue — currently take priority.

“Hopefully the city will identify this as a need (for Measure P funding), but of course, there will always be competing needs,” Marasovic said in an interview. “Realistically, RV parking is not permanent, and land is being taken up for housing. But many people feel safer in RVs – that’s their home – and legally, the courts have said we can’t just eject them from the community.”

The Berkeley City Council is expected to discuss future plans to secure another RV parking lot at its April 11 meeting.

The SPARK lot was first opened in July 2021 by Dorothy Day House, a local nonprofit dedicated to helping people who are homeless. But as part of the Grayson shelter — technically called the West Berkeley Horizon Transitional Village, which was located in a converted warehouse at 742 Grayson St. near Aquatic Park — the RV parking was always intended to be an interim solution during the pandemic.

Horizon officially shuttered operations at the end of 2022, because the property is slated to become the site of a commercial research and development building in West Berkeley’s mixed manufacturing district.

While arrangements were made for the residents of Horizon’s 50 beds to move into the Berkeley Inn, no lot was identified for the 50 RVs’ residents.

The cost of another RV parking lot — dependent on the potential location, capacity and breadth of social services offered — will be evaluated by the city’s Council Budget and Finance Committee, likely later this year.

Given the roadblocks ahead, Marasovic suggested that other efforts might be useful to help free up some cash, whether that means mitigating expensive 5150 transports or developing a crisis stabilization center in Berkeley.

“I don’t know what efforts the city has made, but I believe they need to pick it up,” Marasovic said. “But if there’s a space for affordable housing, I wouldn’t say a permanent RV lot should take that land, instead.”

The San Jose City Council voted unanimously Tuesday afternoon to drop a proposal that’s been on the books for nearly three decades, marking a sharp reversal from the council’s stance in 2020 when they approved the project’s environmental impact report. The overpass would have extended North San Jose’s Charcot Avenue about .6 miles from Paragon Drive over I-880 to Oakland Road.

“To have them (the city council) go back and say they’re going to change it, I just think of that quote by Margaret Mead: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,’” said Erin McCarthy, Orchard Teacher Association president. “I think our Orchard community truly embodies that quote right now.”

Over the past two years, parents and teachers of Orchard School on nearby Fox Lane have launched petitions, attended dozens of community and city meetings and even filed a lawsuit against the city to voice their disdain for the project.

Construction of the overpass would have required the city to widen Silkwood Lane on the northern edge of the school’s campus and invoke eminent domain to claim about a half-acre section of open space on the school’s campus. Parents and teachers had argued that the project would pose a safety risk to children walking to and from school, increase pollution and shrink the school’s campus.

Virginia Varela-Campos, a parent of three children who currently attend Orchard School and one who recently graduated, called the decision a “huge success for our children, our community and our school.” She and her children live in a mobile home park just north of the campus, where they walk seven minutes to and from school each day without crossing any major streets.

“Putting this roadway extension in between the neighborhood where we live and the school just seemed extremely dangerous,” Varela-Campos said in an interview. “And now, it’s just outdated and unnecessary. It’s not a benefit like it was seen as back in the ’90s.”

Councilmember David Cohen, who represents North San Jose and spearheaded the effort to drop the project, agreed.

“The changing circumstances made it clear that this was not a project that was going to work,” Cohen said during Tuesday’s meeting.

In the works since 1994, the Charcot Avenue extension project was baked into the city’s 2020 General Plan. City leaders at the time saw it as a promising way to improve connectivity from the East and West sides of I-880 and provide a crossing for not only vehicles, but bicycles and pedestrians as well. It was also meant to support increased development and economic vitality in industrial-heavy North San Jose.

More recently, San Jose has been locked in a legal battle with the city of Santa Clara over development plans in the area. Santa Clara has repeatedly threatened to sue San Jose if the city tried to add more housing in this underutilized, largely industrial area of the city before making certain transportation improvements. The Charcot Extension was previously considered by the city of San Jose as one of those necessary transportation improvements, aiming to relieve some of the congestion from nearby Brokaw Road.

Over the course of the past three decades, however, the area around the proposed overpass has evolved considerably. Instead of industrial buildings, the overpass would now be sandwiched between dozens of new homes and Orchard Elementary School — neither of which existed when the plans were first brought forward.

On top of those changes, Santa Clara city officials have indicated that the Charcot Extension is not one of the priority traffic improvements they want to see completed by the city of San Jose in North San Jose before more housing is built, according to San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.

Weighing those factors, city officials decided that dropping the project and diverting the remaining $3.9 million in project funds to two other high-priority traffic improvement initiatives — the interchange project at Highway 101/Maybury/Berryessa or the interchange project at Highway 101 and Zanker Road — was the best route to take.

“We’ve got a lot of other high-priority congestion management projects to move forward in North San Jose,” Liccardo said in an interview. “So, spending these dollars on a project that is less than warmly embraced by the community doesn’t make a lot of sense when we could be used those funds on other critical traffic improvements.”

The VTA in December 2021 made a similar decision to refrain from allocating a planned $9.5 million for the Charcot Avenue extension projects and putting those funds toward one of the two North San Jose interchange projects as well. The extension was one of the several infrastructure projects that voters agreed to pay for through the VTA’s 2016 Measure B — a 30-year, half-cent sales tax slated to provide $6.3 billion for transportation and infrastructure improvements.

As of June 2021, the city’s Department of Transportation had spent $1.8 million on the extension project.

Councilmember Raul Peralez on Tuesday called out the city council’s split 2020 vote to approve the project’s environmental impact report, saying that they were “the culprit” for most of the wasted staff time, resources and money. The report was approved in a 6-3 vote at that time with council members Peralez, Pam Foley and Magdalena Carrasco casting the dissenting votes.

“Ultimately, I think we’re doing the right thing now,” he said, “but it’s an important note I think for all of us to recognize.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom this week signed off on a major state spending plan that, in part, allocated $8 million for the city of San Jose to create a “quiet zone” along the Union Pacific Warm Springs Railroad corridor that runs through downtown and the neighborhoods of Japantown and Hensley.

As a first step, the city plans to create a quiet zone that would require train operators to silence their horns from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. at crossings along 1.8 miles of the San Jose tracks — from the crossing at Montgomery Street near the Diridon Station to Horning Street near San Jose’s northern limit. City officials hope to have the overnight quiet zone in place by the end of October.

Residents hope the newly acquired funding will allow the city to stop the use of the horns at all hours of the day.

Jason Muehring, who lives about a block away from the tracks in the Hensley neighborhood and has spent years working with officials to find a resolution to the nuisance, said in an interview Thursday that the new funding provided a “light at the end of the tunnel.”

“We’re just really looking forward to finally being able to sleep through the night once our quiet zone is completed,” he said.

Assemblymember Ash Kalra, who represents portions of downtown San Jose, submitted the state funding request for the project, which was included as part of the governor’s  $100 billion California Comeback Plan.

In response to the funding approval, Kalra said Thursday that he was looking forward to “bringing some peace to the neighborhood.”

“If we’re going to tell folks ‘we want you to come and live in Japantown,’ then we better make it a community that’s welcoming,” he said. “… And those train horns aren’t exactly welcoming in the middle of the night.”

The jarring signals from the diesel trains that run along the tracks first became an issue for residents in early 2019 when Union Pacific increased the number of trains passing through the city and began running them at night as part of a plan to reduce idling locomotives.

Residents like Muehring said their quality of life dropped almost immediately, prompting them to band together to try and put an end to the unbearable late-night disturbances.

Under federal law, train operators are mandated to sound their horns at crossings to warn nearby motorists and pedestrians to stay away from the tracks — that is unless a city like San Jose can meet certain safety requirements, such as warning signs, barriers and bells at crossings, to establish a quiet zone.

A study completed on behalf of the city last summer confirmed that San Jose met the minimum requirements to move forward with its plan for an overnight quiet zone so long as safety improvements were made to the Jackson and Seventh streets crossing.

After residents spent two years lodging complaints against the railway operator and lobbying city officials to address the issue, the city announced plans in August 2020 to create a quiet zone. But the COVID-19 pandemic, design process, funding needs and drawn-out negotiations with Union Pacific have delayed it.

To remedy the noise issues as quickly as possible, city officials are finalizing a plan with Union Pacific and other federal and state agencies for temporary infrastructure improvements like plastic barriers and new signage that will allow the “quiet zone” to take effect much quicker than waiting for the permanent improvements. They’ll also cost about $100,000 compared to tens of millions of dollars.

“We are very aware that people have been losing sleep for a very long time, and it is our number one priority to push this as quickly as within our power in order to get them some sleep,” said Jessica Zenk, deputy director of transportation for San Jose.

Still, the quick-build improvements will fall short of achieving the broader goal sought by community members — making the quiet zone around the clock so that not only could residents sleep better at night but Japantown businesses and visitors could also experience fewer interruptions during the day.

That’s where the new state funding comes into play.

To mandate trains silence their horns at all hours, city officials say that heightened safety features and infrastructure updates must take place first, such as installing pedestrian gates, replacing curbs and adding new lighting structures. The desired upgrades at all 14 crossings along the corridor would cost between $20-$30 million, according to a study completed last year.

But the new $8 million in state funding, along with about $5 million set aside in the city’s budget next year, will allow San Jose officials to complete the necessary upgrades at the three railroad crossings that need the heaviest lift. The city is seeking other funding, such as federal grants, to help cover the remaining costs.

“This is almost like the starting place because now the real work is actually building the improvements themselves,” said Christopher Wemp, a community leader who lives near the tracks in Japantown. “It’s a great step as part of a bigger journey.”

The irritating sound of late-night horns is not the only problem San Jose residents and city leaders have had with Union Pacific in recent years. Illegal dumping, graffiti and trash accumulating along the tracks also became a sore spot, with city officials even threatening to sue the railway operator for posing a nuisance.

But in December, Union Pacific finally agreed to enter a 10-year contract with the city promising to conduct routine clearing of trash and encampments along its railroad tracks.

The notice gives people 72 hours to pack up and leave the area. On Monday morning, cleanup and evictions will be handled by Caltrans in partnership with the CHP, according to Kevin Drabinski, Caltrans public information officer.

Wayne Bloechl is a pancreatic cancer survivor whose treatments have left him wheelchair-bound. He’s been camping near the highway for a couple of nights after leaving a medical care facility.

“Nobody wants to have humanity sitting on the side of the road,” Bloechl said. “If you can hide us, that’s the best thing for everybody, but unfortunately there’s too many people.”

Bloechl has lived in Santa Cruz County for 35 years, is a geologist by training, and formerly taught at Cabrillo College. The 60-year-old said after years in hospitals and long-term treatment facilities, he was itching to be outside.

“I just couldn’t take being in that anymore, it’s a slow death and I just wanted to be out in the world while I can,” Bloechl said.

“Everything I’ve had is gone, it’s hard to keep your chin up,” Bloechl said, tearing up. “I don’t know what to do.”

The eviction has been a long time coming — Highway 1 and River Street are set to undergo construction to widen the area. The city’s public works project will include the building of additional traffic and bicycle lanes, among other public works improvements.

Still, many residents of the highway encampments, such as Bloechl, don’t have a clear path forward.

According to Jason Hoppin, Santa Cruz County communications manager, there are currently more than 800 people staying in various shelter types. That includes COVID-19 state-funded Project Roomkey, where motels are rented out to unhoused people who are at greater risk of the virus, as well as semi-congregate shelters at Veteran’s Halls, and the National Guard Armory shelter.

“We don’t have really a great deal of capacity in that system, and we still have hundreds and hundreds of people on waiting lists to get into that system,” Hoppin said.

Those accepted into various shelter programs are prioritized based on medical need, Hoppin explained.

“There’s not enough shelter in the county, and the city is doing the very best we can with the resources we have available, within its purview — like the Benchlands, where we have 120 people camping,” City Communications Manager Elizabeth Smith said.

The Benchlands is a city-managed camp in San Lorenzo Park, but Smith said there are only a “few spots” left there for the unhoused.

While both city and county officials deferred to Caltrans when asked if additional spaces were being created for those evicted, Caltrans Public Information Officer Kevin Drabinski said their efforts go so far.

“We have long worked with, and continue to work with the city and county of Santa Cruz,” Drabinski said. “When we say we’ve been working with city and county, and trying to get people into safer situations as available, we mean through those resources.”

Brent Adams, who runs Footbridge Services, providing showers and other services to unhoused people, more recently opened up a managed “agreement camp” at Harvey West. Residents must opt-in to the community’s guidelines to be able to stay at the camp.

More should have been done to assist highway campers in transitioning to different living situations, Adams said.

“The city, county and state play hot potato with this issue,” Adams said, adding the community at large is also a part of addressing homelessness in Santa Cruz.

“I think ultimately, we as community members, don’t find ourselves responsible for this, and they’re our neighbors. We’ve all let these people down,” Adams said.

“We all had an opportunity to do something before this moment and we didn’t, so here it is.”