Gilroy
– The good news in the new Santa Clara Valley Transportation
Authority budget is the $10 million to study bringing more Caltrain
service to Gilroy. The bad news is that Caltrain is cutting service
to Gilroy on July 1.
Gilroy – The good news in the new Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority budget is the $10 million to study bringing more Caltrain service to Gilroy. The bad news is that Caltrain is cutting service to Gilroy on July 1.
The good news is that the VTA found $1 million to study traffic circulation in South County to promote capital improvement projects. The bad news is those projects may be decades away.
But that’s life in the VTA. Even in flush economic times, the agency must take the long view, but as revenue and ridership continue to lag, the VTA is doing a lot more planning than it is building. The agency is about to conclude a “gateway” study that will chart traffic flow from other counties into South County and has begun work on a “circulation” study to address traffic flow within the region. Meanwhile, it’s still trying to build a flyover at the 152/156 interchange that was promised to voters in 1996’s Measure B.
“We have a tough problem of getting things financed right now,” John Ristow, a VTA deputy director, said Monday. “The best projects would go into our 25-year plan, but it’s too early to guess when they would happen.”
Still, the VTA and South County leaders say the studies are crucial if infrastructure in Gilroy and Morgan Hill is to keep pace with growth.
“We try to do these planning studies so projects can be selected and go in the county-wide transportation plan,” Ristow said. “It’s important because that’s how they get funded.”
Don Dey, Gilroy’s transportation engineer, said Monday that the city could use funding for a number of infrastructure improvements, including developing new links between Santa Teresa Boulevard and Monterey Highway and highway interchange improvements as outlined in the city’s master transportation plan that was completed last year.
“We want to make sure they document in their model all of our current and future roadway improvements,” Dey said. “Make sure their land use information is up to date, particularly given the quite extensive work we went through to get out of the transportation circulation master plan.”
Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy is hopeful the circulation and gateway studies will disprove the conventional wisdom that 80 percent of traffic into a newly developed Coyote Valley would come from the north. Kennedy is convinced that if South San Jose is eventually home to 50,000 workers and 80,000 residents, traffic from the south will clog the freeways and Morgan Hill’s main thoroughfares.
“It’s very critical that we do a circulation study and get new numbers on population and traffic flows, especially in regard to Coyote Valley,” Kennedy said. “We have not had a good study of South County circulation.”
Ristow said that an expansion of Butterfield Boulevard is necessary to accommodate what has become a major north-south artery, and that it would be desirable to connect Butterfield with Santa Teresa. He said Highway 101 needs to be widened south of Cochrane Road, needs multiple interchange improvements and could benefit from more overpasses and off ramps.
But no one knows when any of these projects will get done. The circulation study is expected to take about a year. When it’s complete the VTA board of directors will decide which projects are worth putting in its long-term capital improvement budget, a document that lays out transportation projects over a quarter-century.
The current plan, the VTP 2030, is full of languishing projects, most notably a $4.3 billion BART extension through downtown San Jose into Santa Clara. The VTA recently spent more than $40 million to add Caltrain trips to Gilroy, but falling ridership forced Caltrain to cut its service back to three round-trips a day. Many of the agency’s highest-profile projects are dependent on a federal transportation bill that passed the House but has stalled in the Senate.
Ristow said that new projects will have to compete with projects already high on the VTA’s list of priorities, though the board of directors could decide South County projects merit immediate attention. But with five of 12 votes, San Jose has traditionally dominated the VTA, as evidenced by long-completed North County circulation studies and the board’s recent refusal to study cheaper BART alternatives that were desired by South County representatives.
Supervisor and VTA Director Don Gage said Monday that economic and political obstacles notwithstanding, the studies are needed.
“Once we have a plan, they can be on equal footing,” Gage said. “Before we didn’t have any of that. Once we have a study, we’ll know what we want it to look like and then it’s just a matter of prioritizing. Having a plan helps.”
Gateway study
South County Gateway Study
• Evaluate future traffic flow from neighboring counties into South County.
• Takes into account population projections and housing and employment forecasts.
• Cost: $600,000
• Scheduled for summer release
South County Circulation Study
• Evaluate traffic flow within South County to propose improvement projects.
• Considers typical vehicle use, bottleneck locations and environmental aspects.
• Cost: $400,000
• Scheduled to be released late 2006
