Red Phone: Road needs to be widened

“Can (or more appropriately will) the city do something about the traffic lanes heading towards Christopher High School on Santa Teresa Boulevard? The problem starts at Longmeadow Drive all the way to East Day Road. There doesn’t appear to be efficient use of the existing pavement out there. There are hundreds of feet of wide, empty striped medians and/or shoulders while cars are backed up and trying to crowd into over-capacity lanes. Why?”
and…
“Can the city do something different on Santa Teresa Boulevard as you approach Sunrise Drive headed towards CHS? There seems to be a lot of unused pavement on Santa Teresa Boulevard that could be converted to usable lanes for better flow and safety of drivers. The last time the city restriped the lanes, they eliminated the merge lane on the right and shortened the left turn lane to Sunrise. Now, drivers in the left lane cut off people in the right lane (which eventually ends) and do not let them merge. There just isn’t enough room to get into the left lane in the “allowed area,” especially with the speed on Santa Teresa. And then, why is the entrance into the left turn lane so close to the signal? Often times, drivers wanting to turn left drive over the yellow lines to either avoid the back-up on Santa Teresa or because the speed of following vehicles makes entering so close very difficult and dangerous. Why not just make the entrance further back, maybe to its original location? Another option would be to return the striping to its original configuration. That worked better than these new ‘improvements.’”
Red Phone: Dear Deep But Not Wide, The short answer is that the city doesn’t have the right of way to widen the road there and relies on developers to make the changes because it doesn’t own the land, said Don Dey, traffic engineer for the City of Gilroy.
A big part of the traffic flustration in the area has been a result of the 50 percent increase in student attendance this year at CHS, he said.
“Like every other school in the city, there is a 15- or 20-minute period before and after school where there is congestion, but then it evens off,” Dey said.
Eventually the goal is to have two lanes going each direction up to the school, he said. With the housing development on the west side by Sunrise Avenue coming along, an additional lane could be added as early as next summer, Dey said. The northbound lane, which is the one people have been the most concerned about, will be added once development begins on the east side, he said.
The current design was selected after an in-depth review designed to provide the best options for traffic flow in the area, he said. Unfortunately the developer’s and city’s plan don’t always move at the same time and you have temporary “pinch points” that occur like the one here, Dey said.