This blog is written by Andrew Hsu, Nick Brosnahan - active El Camino Real team members. It highlights key findings from the El Camino Real (State Route 82) Relinquishment Exploration Study 2015.

State Route 82 Relinquishment Exploration Study was commissioned by the Grand Boulevard Initiative (GBI) Task Force and the Metropolitan Transportation Committee (MTC) and released in 2015 to highlight the potential costs, benefits, and issues associated with a municipality requesting relinquishment (the transfer of ownership), of El Camino Real (State Route 82) from Caltrans (state agency who currently owns SR 82) to their respective city (or county).

Though not explicitly stated in the report, it seems likely that during this timeframe, relinquishment was proposed as a possible solution to enable municipalities to simplify implementation of more bike and pedestrian-friendly street designs on El Camino Real (ECR, SR82) without being subject to Caltrans review. Because Caltrans historically applied its openly pro-motorist Highway Design Manual (HDM) towards ECR, earlier attempts by various municipalities to implement more bike/ped friendly route designs within their community’s portion of ECR were subject to grueling negotiations with Caltrans to grant design exceptions.

The report provides an overview of the Caltrans relinquishment process, what routes are candidates, and outlines the benefits and potential costs for municipalities interested in undertaking this process. To further illustrate the cost/benefit tradeoffs, the report provides a number of case studies, most notably the relinquishment of the Alameda (SR 82) to the city of San Jose. Due to funding limitations, the report is limited to data for the 20 miles of ECR from Redwood City (at Woodside Road or SR84) to San Jose (at the I880 overpass).

The nine municipalities and two counties (ECR runs through unincorporated portions of these counties) considered in the report are the following (from north to south):

Redwood City
Unincorporated San Mateo County
Atherton
Menlo Park
Palo Alto
Unincorporated Santa Clara County
Los Altos
Mountain View
Sunnyvale
Santa Clara
San Jose

Below is some specific data presented in the report for each of the cities and counties. It is summarized in the graphs presented in the report’s executive summary section.

Existing Conditions of SR 82 Study Area and repair costs to bring the route to a state of good repair:

Annual Operating and Maintenance Cost Analysis per municipality (assuming pavement maintenance is performed once every 5 years.

Quick comparison with existing city budgets

Palo Alto’s annual street maintenance budget is $5.1M and that of Los Altos is $1M (2023-24). Maintaining El Camino Real would need a 10% increase in annual maintenance costs for cities post-relinquishment.

In conclusion

The purpose of relinquishment is to allow for municipalities to take over streets that Caltrans no longer considers "regional" or "arterial" and give the city much more control in terms of design of such relinquished streets. However, a city needs to prove that it has a revenue source for upkeep. ECR is certainly a candidate, given that 101 and 280 now serve the function of a regional route. However, relinquishment would require all 19 cities along ECR (and the counties for the parts in unincorporated county sections) to apply to Caltrans for relinquishment (a process lasting a minimum of 2-3 years), line up funding, negotiate with Caltrans to improve ECR (prior to handover), and the absorb future upkeep and maintenance costs into their respective city budgets. Relinquishment can also result in inconsistent design standards and practices across municipalities.

Learn more about El Camino Real and SVBC’s El Camino Real efforts here.