GILROY
– Now only visited by a few work crews and construction trucks,
hundreds of kids will flock to the Ascencion Solorsano campus at
Santa Teresa Boulevard and Club Drive when Gilroy’s newest middle
school opens its doors in September.
GILROY – Now only visited by a few work crews and construction trucks, hundreds of kids will flock to the Ascencion Solorsano campus at Santa Teresa Boulevard and Club Drive when Gilroy’s newest middle school opens its doors in September.
Taking those children to the $25 million junior high will be, for the most part, automobile-driving parents. Taking the brunt of that traffic impact will be Santa Teresa Boulevard at Club Drive, where an additional 1,160 daily vehicle trips are anticipated for Gilroy’s westernmost north-south thoroughfare.
“There will be an impact, but it’s a temporary impact. Cars will be turning off from Santa Teresa (at Club Drive) only at the peak morning and afternoon times,” said Charlie Van Meter, Gilroy Unified School District’s director of facilities planning. “After all, it is a school.”
According to a study conducted in January of 2000, 368 trips will be made each weekday morning between 7 and 9 a.m. After school lets out, more than 230 trips will be made between 2 and 4 p.m.
Depending on where a driver is coming from, delays on Santa Teresa Boulevard and its intersections are estimated to be anywhere from less than five seconds to as much as 40 seconds.
“When you think about 40 seconds it may not seem like a long time, but it’s not a desirable level of delay. It puts the level of service at a D (for morning commuters at Santa Teresa Boulevard and First Street),” said Gary Higgins of Gilroy-based Higgins Associates, the civil engineering firm that did the traffic study.
Level of service is measured in terms of lost travel time, driver discomfort, driver frustration and fuel consumption. The city’s standard for roads is level C, with A being best and F being worst.
The good news, said Higgins, is that by adding more “green time” to lights at congested turns, levels of service can improve.
The plan to manage the new traffic loads was designed by Gilroy-based Ruggeri, Jensen, Azar & Associates. It will be funded in large part by Glen Loma Group, the real estate development group adding the bulk of the new housing around Santa Teresa.
John Filice, of Glen Loma Group, said an exact timeline for starting the roadwork has not been set, but stressed that the project at Santa Teresa and Club Drive would be done well before the school opens in September and should take less than 30 days to complete.
“It’s not a big project, it’s very little new pavement. Getting permits is the biggest part of the process to be done because the county and the city have jurisdiction there,” Filice said.
County permits have been issued. After the city issues theirs and the weather dries up, road work will begin, Filice said.
Among a number of other changes, a key addition to Santa Teresa’s southbound side of the road will be a left-turn lane that can hold roughly 16 cars.
Without the lane, drivers would be forced to stop in the middle of the southbound through-lane as traffic would pour on from the heavily traveled Santa Teresa-First Street intersection.
For northbound drivers needing to slow down for a right turn into the campus, a new right-turn lane will be added. In theory, it allows through-drivers to continue northbound with little back-up, as they for the most part do now.
To make driving easier for motorists leaving the middle school, the school exit at Club Drive will have three lanes – a left turn lane to get onto southbound Santa Teresa, a through lane to access Eagle Ridge and a right turn lane to head north on Santa Teresa.
A critical acceleration lane is being added to northbound Santa Teresa. The acceleration lane allows drivers to safely merge with oncoming northbound traffic.
Ascencion Solorsano’s outlying location won’t help reduce traffic numbers.
GUSD planners do not anticipate many Solorsano students walking to school.
And for at least the first year, Eliot Elementary School students – all 385 of them – will have to commute to Solorsano. Eliot is getting demolished and rebuilt in 2003-04. Students from Eliot will be housed on the new middle school campus during construction time, along with the 240 incoming sixth-graders anticipated to attend Solorsano next year.
The most significant impact to Santa Teresa traffic in the area won’t be generated solely from the middle school, Higgins points out.
His 2000 study showed that after existing and approved projects around Santa Teresa Boulevard are built, the road will see more than 400 cars per hour in the peak morning period. At build out of the Gilroy General Plan in that area, roughly 2,500 more cars will use Santa Teresa than today.
Among other changes to handle future impacts, Santa Teresa at First Street will ultimately get dual left-turn lanes and dual through-lanes by the time of build out, Higgins said.
Projected traffic delays after new middle school opens
Intersection/Street Delay now Future delay
Santa Teresa (north) – AM 5.1 to 15 sec. 15.1 to 25 sec.
Santa Teresa (north) – PM 5.1 to 15 sec. 5.1 to 15 sec.
Santa Teresa (south) – AM 5 sec. or less 5.1 to 15 sec.
Santa Teresa (south) – PM 5 sec. or less 5 sec. or less
Santa Teresa and 1st – AM 15.1 to 25 sec. 25.1 to 40 sec.
Santa Teresa and 1st – PM 5.1 to 15 sec. 15.1 to 25 sec.
Santa Teresa and 3rd – AM 5 sec. or less 5 sec. or less
Santa Teresa and 3rd – PM 5 sec. or less 5 sec. or less
Santa Teresa and Club – AM 5 sec. or less 5.1 to 15 sec.
Santa Teresa and Club – PM 5 sec. or less 5.1 to 15 sec.
*Delay is measured in terms of lost travel time, driver discomfort, driver frustration and fuel consumption.
Source: Higgins Associates Civil & Traffic Engineers
