Third Street should
– at the very least – have some hardscape
to calm the traffic
BRRT BLAAT BLAAT My mind was jerked awake too early by yet another loud, fast vehicle tearing along my quiet, narrow residential street. True, few kids would be playing at 4am, few bicyclers might be in the path of the speeder. The only possible victim, besides my good night’s sleep, might be one of the pre-dawn, dog-walkers heading for the Uvas Levee trail. So, what’s the harm if 4 or 5 early morning commuters speed to the train or freeway, via our four-block stretch of west Third Street?
Well, just the unsettling prospect of the traffic load and the speeding increasing if the city continues down the path toward making Third Street an artery. Hey, mister. Could I borrow your radar gun?
Many years ago, my section of town represented leapfrog development. Third Street between Westwood Drive and Laurel Avenue built up before Wren Avenue to Westwood. Sometime in the interval, Gilroy planners decided Third should be one of the east-west arteries. So, the stretch between Wren and Westwood is broad and smooth, has bike lanes and has only two streets intersecting it. It looks like an artery. That section is not even one quarter of the length of Third Street. The other three quarters do not look like arteries! There’s the problem.
Most of the street cannot accommodate the traffic of a through street – a through street planned to connect Monterey with Santa Teresa and stretch onward to Hecker Pass. Look at Third Street between Monterey Street and Church Street sometime. When both sides are full of parked cars, drivers wonder if they can pass going in opposite directions. Not looking like an artery! Rather, like most of Third Street, it looks like a sleepy neighborhood street, a street where a child, ball, or dog might burst from between parked cars, a street where residents gather in front yards, especially on hot evenings as opposed to a street where commuters should be rushing to or from their train, carpool, or roadway.
Traffic calming of some sort is in order. Closing Third at Santa Teresa, forcing through traffic to use Luchessa Avenue, First Street, or Mantelli Drive is one option. Luchessa and Mantelli have built-in calmers in that they don’t go all the way through. First Street is constructed as the artery and state highway that it is. That’s where the traffic belongs, not two blocks south on Third Street. My other favored method is the kind of giant speed bumps that Santa Cruz, San Jose’s Rose Garden neighborhood, Menlo Park, and Morgan Hill have put in place. If you approach them at more than 20mph, you will be flying! The bumps have two positive effects: many drivers avoid the streets, reducing traffic. Those who choose to drive there do so at a slowed-down, neighborhood pace.
So, come on Gilroy Traffic Planners. Quit looking at my street as a through-way. We have houses, parking, two schools, kids, and pets. Don’t give us commuters, speeders, and cars and more cars.
Guest columnist Rose Barry is a longtime resident and a member of the editorial board. Anyone interested in writing a guest column may contact Editor Mark Derry at 842-6400
