City council to talk bus route to Gilroy Gardens, keeping pools open

During next Monday’s meeting, council is expected to vote to request the Valley Transportation Authority provide bus service to Gilroy Gardens during the summer months.
“Gilroy Gardens hires more than 500 youth to work in its park and these youths do not own automobiles for trasnportation making it difficult to travel to and from their place of work,” Don Dey, city transportation engineer wrote in a memo to Tom Haglund, city administrator.
Dey also said that the new bus line would help reduce the city’s carbon footprint.
But the bus line would not generate sufficient ridership to justify the expence, according to a memo from Jim Lawson, executive policy advisor for the VTA.
“VTA’s previous experience with this type of service at Great America Theme Park in Santa Clara, a much bigger park, showed that only a small number of employees and park patrons used the service. The service was cancelled due to low ridership,” the memo read.
Council’s discussion of implementing a new bus line comes on the heels of an another bus line that the VTA has threatened to cancel. An April 9 memo from the VTA  to Perry Woodward said that said bus line 17, which travels from Gilroy’s Tranist Center to county buildings on Tomkins Court, is likely to be canceled due to low ridership.
The motion to provide limited bus service to Gilroy Gardens was initiated by Councilman Dion Bracco during a March 19 council meeting.
Council is also slated to vote on a new 2012 summer aquatics program that would keep all three pools (Christopher High School, Gilroy High School and South Valley Middle School) open during the summer for limited use. The proposal provides recreation swim and water slides at CHS, swim lessons and lap swim at GHS and subsidized swim lesons and recreational swim at SVMS. The proposal requires a budget ammendment of $180,000, which includes pool repairs at SVMS.