Four Corners Is Being Redesigned Around Its Saturday Crowd

At Skyline Boulevard and La Honda Road, the weekend has its own layout. Overflow cars from Alice's Restaurant line the highway shoulders, motorcycles fill the Skywood Trading Post lot, and people cross between the two on foot. Almost every piece of the Four Corners project, both the work already done and the parts still in the proposal stage, is aimed at that weekend scene.

Two Stop Signs Became Four on October 5

Caltrans switched the junction of State Route 35 and State Route 84 to all-way stop control on October 5, 2026. Drivers now have to come to a complete stop from every direction, according to the Town of Woodside's alert. Before that, the intersection had two stop signs and two crosswalks. One crosswalk connected the Skywood Trading Post lot to Alice's Restaurant. The other, as The Almanac described it in November 2025, "leads to nowhere," ending at the triangle of land between the roads.

It took about a year. At a Woodside town hall on October 29, 2025, Caltrans presented a $500,000 project to install a four-way stop at what was then a 40 mph intersection. Design was 50% complete, and the goal was to begin construction the following fall. More than 100 people attended in person or online. The stop signs went up on that schedule.

Every Piece of the Design Points at the Weekend Lot

The earlier phase of work shows where the project starts. Caltrans' project page lists an immediate phase scheduled to finish in August 2026:

• Red curbs at four locations "to improve intersection visibility and reduce parking conflicts"
• High-visibility ladder striping on the north crosswalk
• Yield-line markings at that crosswalk
• "KEEP CLEAR" pavement markings
• Refreshed striping where needed

At Woodside's September 22 council session, Caltrans said the red curbs, ladder striping and KEEP CLEAR markings were completed on August 21, according to Citizen Portal's summary of the meeting.

Three of those five items deal with parking and pedestrians, not with how fast cars move. They respond to the scene The Almanac described in its 2025 story, with highway shoulders "lined with overflow parking from Alice's Restaurant" and "dozens of bikers" gathered in the Skywood Trading Post parking lot. Alice's, at 17288 Skyline Boulevard, calls itself a gathering place for families, motorcyclists, hikers, equestrians, locals and visitors. All of those groups arrive in the same few weekend hours.

The next phase, scheduled between September 2026 and April 2027, continues in the same direction. It adds the all-way stop markings, more lane striping, upgraded and new warning signs, and Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons at the pedestrian crossing on SR-35 just north of the intersection. The beacons will be on the crossing people use between the parking areas and the restaurant.

Walker Wells, a member of Woodside's Circulation Committee, has pushed on this intersection longer than most. "It's called the Skyline Scenic Corridor, and it's meant to preserve what you see and the beauty of the area. But people don't feel safe up there and people are dying on the weekends," he told The Almanac.

What Is Done, What Is Scheduled, What Is Only Proposed

The measures at Four Corners are moving on three separate clocks: done, scheduled and proposed.

The Proposals That Would Reach Further Than the Stop Signs

The rows at the bottom of that table are the ones that would change a Skyline weekend the most, and they focus on weekends just as directly. San Mateo County's South Coast Traffic Advisory Panel issued its recommendations on May 8, 2026. They call for actual weekend traffic enforcement, several concentrated enforcement events each year, driver-feedback signs, and citations for commercial roadside photographers working in Caltrans right-of-way without permits. The weekend enforcement piece now has money behind it. At the September 22 council session, Supervisor Ray Mueller said the county will fund two officers for weekend enforcement along the state highway corridors, at about $125,000 a year, with the contract routed through the Town of Woodside, Citizen Portal's summary reports. The photographer item addresses a specific part of the Skyline weekend. In The Almanac's August coverage, Wells said car clubs and roadside photos shared on social media appear to draw more joyriders to the corridor.

The panel also recommended cleaning and expanding turnouts on SR-84 and SR-35 and lowering the Four Corners speed limit from 40 to 25 mph. It asked state representatives to seek an expansion of California's automated speed camera pilot to high-impact locations on the South Coast.

Wells started the Safe Corridor Initiative, a petition effort that had more than 500 people pressing officials by August. It calls for safer road design, stronger enforcement and public acknowledgment of the highways' dangers from Caltrans and elected officials, according to The Almanac's August 13 report. On September 24, the initiative asked state legislators to introduce a bill drafted by residents that would allow up to eight speed-enforcement cameras, three of them at Four Corners. The group's site says the draft has not been introduced or enacted.

Caltrans' next step will take longer than the striping. At the same September 22 session, the agency described a formal Road Safety Audit covering SR-9, SR-35 and SR-84 over an estimated four to six months. It said it would respond to 16 recommendations in immediate, near-term and long-term groups. Counting from late September, early 2027 is the soonest the audit could finish.

State Sen. Josh Becker, Assemblymember Marc Berman and Supervisor Mueller scheduled a town hall on the two highways for October 20 at the Mountain Terrace, 17285 Skyline Blvd., with Sheriff Ken Binder, the California Highway Patrol and Caltrans also on the program. The Almanac's preview said the meeting would be livestreamed and recorded, with RSVP and event details posted at berman.asmdc.org/events. Before the meeting, Berman told the paper that "every option, including speed cameras, must be seriously evaluated."

Planning a Skyline Weekend Between Now and Spring

Caltrans' construction window means the intersection will keep changing through April. The town's alert warns of one-way traffic control, equipment staging, minor delays and reduced parking at various points along the project corridor through spring 2027, all depending on weather. Caltrans QuickMap shows real-time conditions.

Two other changes affect the routes up the hill this fall:

1. Upper Old La Honda Road is closed during work hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., through Friday, December 11, while a contractor installs guardrails and clears the road. It reopens after work hours each day, according to the town's alert. The alert does not name a detour.
2. SR-84 below the hill is getting lower school-zone limits. Caltrans and the town are coordinating a 15 mph limit near Woodside Elementary School and a 35 mph limit near Woodside High School, which is targeted for November 2026. Farther down, the town's September bulletin reported a new synchronized flashing stop-sign system at Glenwood Avenue and Cañada Road.

If the trip up Skyline ends at a trailhead rather than a table at Alice's, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District lists these parking options:

• El Corte de Madera Creek Preserve: a 65-space lot 2.7 miles north of the Skyline and La Honda Road junction, plus preserve access from Skeggs Point across Skyline
• Windy Hill Open Space Preserve: roadside trailhead parking on upper Skyline, listed as 10, 11 and 6 spaces at three locations
• Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve: 37 spaces at Skyline and Page Mill/Alpine Road, where Midpen warns parking can be limited during peak weekend periods

Those counts come from Midpen's live preserve pages, and availability can change. They are useful to know this season, while red curbs and construction staging take away some of the shoulder parking that weekend visitors used around the junction.

Road and access changes like these are part of how Woodside property is valued, and Four Corners will keep changing through at least April 2027. To talk through how the Skyline corridor work could affect a home you own or are considering in Woodside, Wendy Kandasamy offers a complimentary market consultation and home valuation, grounded in what is actually happening on these roads.