If you travel over Highway 152 eastbound to get to the I-5
freeway or points east, I suspect you’ll agree that it was really
encouraging to read recently in The Dispatch that the perpetual
traffic tie-up mess over at the intersection of highways 152 and
156 east of Gilroy is actually going to be fixed.
If you travel over Highway 152 eastbound to get to the I-5 freeway or points east, I suspect you’ll agree that it was really encouraging to read recently in The Dispatch that the perpetual traffic tie-up mess over at the intersection of highways 152 and 156 east of Gilroy is actually going to be fixed.
Yes, the Bay area’s number-one rated most despised intersection is going to get a “flyover” ramp. While that sounds more like something an airport should have instead of a highway, true to government bureaucratic form, the bad news is that it won’t be completed until 2008.
So over the next four years, be prepared to continue seeing massive eastbound traffic congestion in that area. Indeed for weekend travel, traffic tie-ups in the next few years could begin on the southbound 101 freeway in San Martin, and stack-up all the way to the 10th Street East 152 exit, just to get enmeshed in the bumper-to-bumper traffic competing to get into the retail stores at Gilroy Crossing. And for westbound traffic, it’s conceivable that traffic could start to jam even further back from where it typically stops now, at Casa de Fruta.
While the cost tag for the ramp is currently estimated to be $23 million according to state projections, I’ll guess that it will end up being a lot more than that, just like every other government project normally exceeds its original cost estimate. But what really gripes me is the time delay, given the issue of traffic safety that is bound to get more dangerous at the intersection of 152/156. Four years to fix this mess?
When I lived in southern California and experienced the 1992 major earthquake where parts of the local Santa Monica freeway system were destroyed, state government was able to reconstruct those freeway sections in the record time of months, not years, in order to solve the immense traffic problems created from the destroyed freeway sections.
So given the magnitude of the 152-156 highway traffic problem as being colossal, why can’t the state come up with some creative financing to get this project started this year, and finished within two years? What’s another paltry $23 million more of debt going to hurt us poor taxpayers? For that matter, maybe the state would be willing to takeover Bonfante Gardens in exchange for building this ramp faster. I’m kidding of course.
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Driving around town lately, it now seems that our local vandals are doing their thing by throwing shoes over Gilroy’s above ground street utility lines. While graffiti has been effectively squashed here in town thanks to the top-notch efforts of GPD and Gilroy’s citizen task force against graffiti, leave it to the local town punks to come up with new ways to rattle the system and cause local government to spend more money.
Apparently all you have to do is just steal somebody’s shoes, tie the laces together, find a utility line where you can make a “statement” about your dislike of (fill in the blank) then toss the tied shoes up and over the line in the darkness of night. Behold, a new form of protest “art” has been created. Getting these shoes down involves the use of a truck with a “cherry-picker” lift.
Now if this activity continues to increase in town, the obvious solution is to add a “shoe-removal utility” tax to all new and used shoe sales in Gilroy. Or another option might be to keep all shoes under lock and key, with no sales to anyone under age 18 without an adult present. Come to think of it, maybe most of the hoodlums who throw the shoes are over age 18.
In any event, maybe our creative city councilmen will need to come up with a “shoe-removal” task force to take action if this becomes a pressing city problem.
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Kudos to Dispatch letter writer David Kaeini who suggested in his letter dated April 21 that drivers might, just might consider slowing down in order to save gasoline consumption, and thereby force the oil companies to reduce prices because of decreased demand for gasoline.
Yep, it seems to me that it’s rather hypocritical for any driver to be screaming to high-heaven about the cost of gasoline and then get out on the freeway and put the pedal to the metal on a regular basis at 75 mph or faster.
These morons are forgetting the established fact that the faster you drive the more fuel your vehicle will use, which will directly effect your fuel cost. Put in simple language – it increases. While I agree with Mr. Kaeini, I doubt that the majority of the driving public will even get a clue.
