Gilroy
– Don’t like the current bus routes? Want service closer to your
home and favorite stores?
Gilroy – Don’t like the current bus routes? Want service closer to your home and favorite stores?
The Valley Transportation Agency is giving residents the chance to help design new routes as part of a changeover to a shuttle bus system. The more residents show up at a pair of Feb. 7 public forums, the more likely they’ll have a shuttle pass by through their neighborhood.
To start things off, VTA has proposed a basic redesign that resembles current bus lines, though it adds a stop by county social services on Tomkins Court and ends morning and afternoon service to Longmeadow and Sunrise drives in northwest Gilroy. It also requires Gavilan College students coming from north of downtown Gilroy to transfer from a regional bus at the Caltrain station on Monterey Street and catch a shuttle bus to the campus.
The train station will remain Gilroy’s transportation hub under the community busing system, serving as a transfer point between east-west shuttles and regional buses that run up to San Jose and Sunnyvale.
“The fact that they’re going with smaller city-sized buses rather than regional buses allows them to get into locations where larger buses couldn’t because of tight turning radiuses,” City Transportation Engineer Don Dey said. “It holds the opportunity for door to door service, like getting closer to a Costco or a Target, and maybe getting into the hearts of some of our neighborhoods.”
Matilda Ortega, 83, usually relies on the Outreach para-transit service to drive her from her Murray Avenue home to the Gilroy Senior Center a few miles away. She said she stopped clambering onto the 40-foot VTA buses after injuring her hip, but she liked the idea of a regularly scheduled shuttle service.
“I like to go to the shopping centers, and I usually take Outreach, but sometimes it’s hard because there are only certain hours (they can pick me up),” Ortega said. “I think I would take the smaller bus.”
Lawrence Robinson, 65, hops on the Line 19 bus every day at McDonald’s on First Street. He rides to the library on Sixth Street before heading back home. He says he doesn’t necessarily need a bus to stop in front of his home, but he thinks the shift to smaller shuttles makes economic sense.
“I ride these bigger buses and usually they’re empty,” he said.
And increasing ridership means tapping residents for feedback, said Mayor Al Pinheiro, who learned of the pitfalls in designing bus routes when he proposed shuttling teenage workers to Bonfante Gardens in west Gilroy.
“The school district bus coordinator said they did not get the ridership (on their existing service), and right there that explained to me why that wouldn’t be a good thing,” Pinheiro said. “I’d rather see the community seize the opportunity to say what they need.”
Officials hope to start up the new service by July. Once it goes into effect, Gilroy would join Los Gatos as one of the only cities in Santa Clara County to switch to community busing.
