BAY AREA QUAKE : Santa Cruz Residents Find a New Way Over Highway

Jeff Stone is chartering a plane.

Angelo Calio bought a new car equipped with a cellular phone.

Bill Surran put a down-payment on a camper with all the amenities of home.

They are among the estimated 25,000 residents of Santa Cruz County--roughly 20% of the county’s work force--for whom a vital link between work and home has been disrupted by last week’s earthquake.

California 17, a twisting roller-coaster of a four-lane highway across the Santa Cruz Mountains, is closed to regular traffic. It may take at least until the end of November to repair the damage because of landslides touched off by the quake.

Once a logging road, the highway has become the major commuter artery for career-dedicated Santa Cruz County residents, many of whom work at electronics or aerospace firms in the so-called Silicon Valley, a high-tech area around San Jose.

On Sunday, Caltrans announced that the highway will open at 6 a.m. Monday but only to buses, car pools of three or more people and, between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., to three-axle trucks. Pilot cars will guide traffic through the open stretches.

But for those who choose not to take the bus or car pool, what is normally a 45-minute commute over the mountains on California 17 could now take up to four hours, Caltrans spokeswoman Lisa Murphy said. The alternatives to the highway are a circuitous route through quake-ravaged Watsonville to the south or else over a two-lane country road through the mountains.

“Even in normal times, the commute over the hill is exhausting,” said Calio, a dentist who bought a new Thunderbird two days after the quake in the hope that it would provide an extra measure of comfort during the long haul. The car has a phone so he can call his office to alert his staff of his progress through the traffic.

Calio said he decided on a new car after his 1986 Thunderbird overheated during what became a two-hour commute for him on Thursday. Showing his burned right hand that was scalded by radiator steam, he said: “Right then and there I decided to trade in my car for the new model. I had enough to deal with with the quake to have car trouble” during the long drive.

Caltrans already is allowing limited bus traffic on California 17.

To assist commuters who need to reach their jobs, the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District said over the weekend that it will institute a new bus route capable of carrying 1,000 passengers a day round-trip on the debris-strewn highway.

But Santa Cruz resident Stone, a software engineer in San Jose, said he and six fellow workers have decided to meet the challenge of getting to work Monday morning by renting a plane from Watsonville Airport.

“The idea of commuting in a car was just too depressing,” Stone said.

Doug Orwig, a dispatcher for Barbary Coast Airways at Watsonville Airport, said he had been flooded with calls from commuters interested in booking the 12-minute flight to San Jose.

He said the airline charter company would organize regular daily flights on single-engine planes to San Jose, charging $65 per person round-trip. But the impromptu plane service would be capable of transporting only 25 people a day, he added.

Santa Cruz officials were encouraging commuters to stay with friends in the San Jose area to reduce traffic. Santa Cruz resident Surran, 40, a delivery truck driver, said he put a down-payment on a camper Friday because he figures it will give him a place to stay overnight closer to his office in Fremont, just north of San Jose, to avoid the tedious commute.

“If I had to stay at a Motel 6 near my job in Fremont, I would have to spend about $30 a night,” Surran said. “That’s $440 a month. For $440 I can make payments on a camper.”

Surran is among the pessimists--or realists, depending on the point of view--who expect California 17 to be closed longer than the five weeks or so estimated by Caltrans officials.

The problems caused by the damage to California 17 are not lost on the corporations of San Jose whose work forces include people from the other side of the mountains.

Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., which employs 1,000 Santa Cruz County residents, has organized a task force to attack the transportation problem. Spokeswoman Katherine Strehl said one option is to set up a temporary shelter at the Sunnyvale plant for commuters. Another option would be to let some employees work at home, she said.