City officials have been down this road before. Residents who
live in what’s been touted as Gilroy’s most traffic-heavy
neighborhood are hoping this time it won’t be a quick pass.
City officials have been down this road before.
Residents who live in what’s been touted as Gilroy’s most traffic-heavy neighborhood are hoping this time it won’t be a quick pass.
The City of Gilroy is looking at the possibility of an extensive, $100,000 traffic study on Welburn Avenue – tabbed by some as the city’s busiest street – eight months after the Gilroy City Council voted to abandon identical plans. The U-turn arrives on the heels of pleadings from frustrated residents and reassurance from city officials that Gilroy is in far better shape financially than anticipated.
Tim Gavin, Welburn Avenue neighbor and spokesman for the cause against the street’s heavy traffic for the last several years, said the city has dodged the issue in the past. The time for a study is now, said Gavin, who estimates roughly 9,000 to 11,000 cars roll down Welburn each day, making life miserable for some residents.
“There is no street in this city that has that number,” he said in reference to the street’s traffic volume.
The proposed traffic study would calculate just how many cars crowd the street each day and recommend what should be done about the road that runs east to west through Gilroy.
The Council approved the traffic study in November 2010, but killed the plans in January because, according to Councilman Bob Dillon, the city couldn’t afford it.
“Now it’s a different story,” said Dillon, pointing to unanticipated spikes in city revenues over the last several months. “We’re looking a little better when you look at the budget.”
The Council voted 5-2 on Sept. 12 to revive traffic study talks for an Oct. 17 meeting. Councilman Dion Bracco, along with Councilman Peter Arellano – who earlier in the meeting said, “You can count cars all you want, but we need this study” – voted against pursuing the study.
The city’s general plan designates Welburn Avenue as a “collector,” which serves a way to direct traffic from neighborhoods to arterial roads, such as First Street, City Transportation Engineer Don Dey said.
Though Dey and Haglund stress the street is doing what it’s designed to according to the general plan, Gavin suggested steps from the city’s 1968 and 1985 general plan maps, including cutting traffic off at the street’s east entrance, where Leavesley Road, an access to U.S. Highway 101, turns into Welburn Avenue.
“It’s not meant for through traffic,” Gavin said, adding the street’s problems date back the 1960s.
Before the Council voted to renew the traffic study discussion, several Welburn neighbors shared with the Council a lack of faith that any progress would be made, including Robert Taylor, who said the consensus among Welburn residents was, “Nothing is going to happen.”
“One lady said, ‘You have a better chance of the Tooth Fairy showing up than getting something out of the City Council,'” Taylor said. “The only chance of something happening on that street is someone getting hurt.”
Taylor told the Council that residents he talked to said it was “useless” to go before city officials to ask that Welburn’s traffic troubles be fixed.
“They’d rather watch football tonight,” he said.
The discussion turned a bit tense between Dillon and three Welburn representatives before the vote.
“If the study comes back and it tells us the status quo is correct, don’t come crying to me,” Dillon said, pointing out to the audience.
“You guys heard me, right?” Dillon later reiterated.
“Are you running for re-election?” one man responded.
The proposed study, the first of its kind for Welburn Avenue, according to Dey, would include a city-hired consultant who would take existing traffic counts and license plate surveys to determine the number of cars traveling Welburn, as well as whether those vehicles are coming into the neighborhood or simply passing through.
Dey said the study would likely keep tabs on the last three digits of a license plate number to track the car as they travel down Welburn.
Some of the steps Gavin has suggested are just what consultants will do during the traffic study, including blocking off access to Welburn in specific areas to see how traffic reacts, Dey said.
“They would identify all of the various paths that motorists take to get to and from the neighborhood,” Dey said. “If we change this roadway configuration, how does it change the driving path to get into a neighborhood?”
The study wouldn’t be all statistics, Dey said.
City officials would also host community meetings intended to inform residents of what to expect from the study as well as get ideas from Gilroyans on how to make the study more effective, Dey said.
He said the study would take at least a year to complete, and called the $100,000 estimate “accurate, as far as that’s the number we’ve been using.”
“We won’t know the real cost until the consultant teams review it and proposes their cost estimate based on the level of work they would be doing,” Dey said.
If approved, money for the study would come from the city’s general fund, City Administrator Tom Haglund said.
Councilman Perry Woodward, a lifelong Gilroyan, said traffic flowing east to west in Gilroy has always been a problem.
“Someday when the city’s entirely built out and the vision of the general plan is fulfilled, those problems will go away. But that’s not happening any time soon,” he said. “I can see why people in the Welburn area are frustrated. There’s certainly more traffic on Welburn than should be there.”
Woodward called the crowded intersection of Monterey Road and First Street “problematic,” forcing drivers to drive down Welburn as an alternative. He said he approved taking another look at the traffic study because the city needed a scientific basis before going forward.
“If we’re going to do anything, the first thing we’re going to do is a study,” Woodward said. “You can’t do guesswork with traffic.”
