Arcata Seeks Community Members to Shape Highway Cap Project Planning

Three state highways have sliced through Arcata for decades, separating neighborhoods, cutting off Cal Poly Humboldt from downtown, and hemming in low-income and BIPOC communities around the campus. Now the City is asking residents to help decide what comes next.

Arcata is accepting applications to join the Reconnecting Arcata Community Partnership Group, the first formal step in planning a project that could ultimately cap U.S. Highway 101 or build new crossings over the tangle of US 101, State Route 255, and State Route 299 that runs through the city's core.

"Apply to join the Reconnecting Arcata Community Partnership Group and provide insight and feedback as the City begins the initial planning steps of this project," the City's project team and its retained design consultant, SmithGroup, said in a joint invitation. The group is meant to represent "a range of constituents and organizations, ages, abilities, demographics and cultures," with members meeting quarterly at key points to weigh in on strategy, community planning, and visual concepts for future transportation improvements.

Mayor Meredith Matthews has framed the stakes in concrete terms. "The land developed by reconnecting the east and west sides of Arcata will support our shared priorities to meet future demands of our community while creating first-class pedestrian and bicyclist connection from the campus to town," she said.

The project envisions solutions that include a new transit center, a potential freeway cap (the source of the project's informal nickname, the "Arcata Cap"), expanded walking and biking infrastructure, and land freed up for housing and public space. Planners have also identified potential benefits to biological corridors connecting the Arcata Community Forest, the Mad River, and Humboldt Bay.

Getting to that point, however, depends on funding that has not yet arrived. Caltrans promised Arcata a share of $128 million from its Reconnecting Communities fund, but as of early October 2025 the city had not received it. Some council members and city staff worried the money might never materialize given California's budget difficulties, though City Engineer Netra Khatri said Arcata was likely to receive the funds. Finance Director Tabatha Miller added a separate fiscal caution, noting the city is already overspending its street tax fund by roughly $1.5 million annually.

The Arcata City Council voted 4-1 in October 2025 to award a $300,000 contract to Smith Group Inc. to begin design development work, ending a period of delay after a larger $500,000 contract to the same firm was tabled at an earlier meeting. Matthews was the lone dissenter on the smaller contract, citing competing local priorities including the Annie and Mary Trail, a strained water fund, and street improvement programs.

The City of Arcata and Cal Poly Humboldt collaborated on the underlying grant application, arguing the project would physically knit the university to the rest of the city while opening land for affordable housing and mixed-use development.

Interested community members can contact the Arcata City Manager's Office at 736 F Street, Arcata, CA 95521, or by phone at 707-822-5951 to submit their interest in joining the CPG.