The holiday week probably had many of us on edge. And it wasn’t just illegal fireworks, but our equally consistent, if not comparably dangerous, traffic congestion that has taken on even more frustrating overtones in recent weeks as work continues to progress (and that’s what it is) on Highway 1 improvements.

And the long and winding roadwork also can be seen through the lens of the polarized debate over passenger rail in the county, which, with an ever increasing price tag, looks to be decades off from being realized, if ever.

So it’s Highway 1 or bust for most of us (with the Metro bus system as an alternative). Which is why the announcement by the somewhat embattled Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission late last month that the agency received a $128.7 million grant from the California Transportation Commission for its complicated and highly visible Watsonville to Santa Cruz Multimodal Corridor Program was a major development in a program that has been underway for several years. The RTC was one of only seven projects across California to receive the state congested corridors funding and one of 11 chosen for a state partnership program.

Drivers by now are well familiar with delays, detours, closed on- and off-ramps as part of the Highway 1 bus-on-shoulder and auxiliary lane construction from State Park Drive to Freedom Boulevard, along with work on the coastal rail trail Segment 12 in Aptos, plus impressive improvements along Soquel Drive that include new bike lanes and sidewalks and upgrades to Santa Cruz Metro services.

As reported in the Sentinel, RTC and county leaders said the new funding will help solve one of the most difficult areas of the project where Highway 1, the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line and Soquel Drive all converge near Aptos Village. Moreover, the state funding means the final segment of the commission’s 8-mile Highway 1 project is fully funded and that four bicycle and pedestrian highway overcrossings will be constructed as part of the rail trail segment between State Park Drive and Rio Del Mar Boulevard.

Meanwhile, as Mid and South County motorists encounter daily the massive, three-phased multimodal project stretching from Soquel Drive to Freedom Boulevard continues. This project when completed will include a combination of bus-on-shoulder and auxiliary lane development in both directions along the roughly 7.5-mile stretch of highway, along with multiple bicycle and pedestrian overcrossings, and the afore-mentioned improvements to Soquel Drive and development of the Coastal Rail Trail along the rail corridor. One auxiliary lane, from Soquel Drive to 41st Avenue is already open as Phase 1 of the project is nearly complete.

The second phase, from Bay Avenue/Porter Street to State Park Drive, including a new bicycle and pedestrian overcrossing at Mar Vista Drive and a replacement of the Capitola Avenue overcrossing, is expected to be completed in 2026.

Construction of the third phase, from State Park Drive to Freedom Boulevard, because of issues involving multiple bridges, is perhaps the most complicated and expensive of the three phases, with costs approaching $200 million, according to the RTC.

The RTC has used a 2016 voter-approved transportation funding measure and leveraged this support into continuing to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding for the highway expansion and for construction of the long-sought-after coastal recreational trail.

Could similar funding sources pay for the electrified train along the dilapidated county-owned coastal rail corridor? Perhaps, but the cost, for now, is estimated at $4.28 billion, and even the most ardent promoters of the train concede some of this will need to be raised through more tax increases.

In the here and now, however, the options for getting around our county will increase exponentially as the ongoing multimodal project continues.

So rather than repeating the refrain that local government, much less the RTC, never accomplishes anything, the latest funding boost to an impressive transportation project is tangible proof it does.