At the last minute San Benito County made a significant improvement to its General Plan by adding four nodes for commercial development along Highway 101, but that is not enough; we have to make it happen in short order.
Highway 101 averages about 30,000Â vehicle trips daily in each direction within the county and an estimated 16 percent of those trips are truck traffic, yet there is almost no current commercial development aimed at that huge potential economic reservoir.
Highway related commercial development is often an either-or proposition. If you stop to fuel and/or grab lunch, or shop at location A, you’re unlikely to stop at location B only a few miles down the highway. Humans are also creatures of habit, when they find somewhere they like they often return to it again and again. Economic competition has many of the same aspects as war, and getting there first with the most is still a valid winning strategy.
In addition to encouraging commercial nodes the General Plan added provisions to lessen the negative impacts of any such development by requiring architectural reviews of the development proposals. All this takes time, in this county it seems to take a lot of time.
Hopefully, the proposed sales tax increase in the unincorporated area to the level that now exists in Hollister will pass allowing the county to reap more benefits from the proposed commercial nodes that will serve mostly pass-through traffic, but unbuilt nodes generate no revenue.
To make it work the commercial development has to happen before Santa Clara County, Monterey County, or both beat us to the punch. The county should develop a fast track program for those commercial projects designed to fulfill the General Plan along the main transportation corridors and put it in place as soon as possible. That would be a wise investment, any added cost of an expedited system will be made back in short order by the added revenue and we can do some badly needed catching up on the General Plan.