As most of you are aware, I sent an article to insidelg and there were several comments that deserve replies. In fact, I intend to answer them all as I get time. Below is the response that will in all likelihood be posted in a few days.
Comment:
It’s great that groups like the Community Alliance are so involved. Transparency in government is always a good thing. But groups like this lose credibility when their arguments are so incomplete and one-sided. What about the families that move out of Town. Do they not take students with them? What about those that graduate and leave the school system. And what about the demographics that show an aging population, not just here, but across the country? Does that figure in to their projections? The traffic numbers are similarly skewed. Albright already has over 250,000 square feet of office space on it. The NET increase is what should be used, not the traffic for the entire project. Be complete and honest LGCA, and your arguments will hold more weight.
Reply:
Tom Mangano, who also is a member of the Los Gatos Community Alliance, gets the credit for all the work you see below. I am the mouthpiece and fully concur with Tom’s findings:
We assumed that people who sold or rented their houses would be replaced by someone else who would occupy their former home. Net change = 0.
We assumed that new units will add more people; thus, an additional impact to the schools and the traffic.
We did use the net increase number to estimate cars and we got those numbers by using the town’s own studies. We used today’s traffic count, not a hypothetical count of how many cars should have been there as the traffic report did.
In the Traffic Study, they added cars to the actual count as if there were people really using the roads. The traffic study said the space was “underutilized”, so they added non-existent cars (“ghost cars”) to the baseline to figure the net. That, in our opinion, was skewing reality to make the traffic increase look less impactful than it is.
In our opinion, that’s wrong. We don’t think most people recall the traffic situation more than 2 years prior, nor should they use a car count of cars that aren’t there. Therefore, we used the town’s current car-use census for our baseline. We used their data for the total traffic that would be generated by 550,000 square feet of Class A corporate headquarters. Their increase was 3126 and ours was 5000 plus. So why the difference?
Let’s start with information from the Hexagon study (in quotes):
“ Each of the development scenarios includes the application of a credit for the existing office uses on the
site. Traffic counts collected at each of the existing project entrances indicate that the project site is
currently generating significantly less traffic than is anticipated/approved for the site buildings suggesting
that the buildings are either underutilized or vacant. Therefore, trips were added to background conditions
to account for the underutilized/vacant space on the project site for each of the development scenarios. In
order to evaluate the potential transportation impacts of the various illustrative development scenarios
now, each of the three additional development scenarios were analyzed. The analysis of each scenario
includes an evaluation of intersection and freeways segment levels of service as was completed and presented for the 550,000 s.f. office development scenario (Scenario 1) within this report. The results of
the analysis for each development scenario are described in detail in Chapter 5.
Project Trip Generation
Through empirical research, data have been collected that correlate to common land uses their
propensity for producing traffic. Thus, for the most common land uses there are standard trip generation
rates that can be applied to help predict the future traffic increases that would result from a new
development.
Hexagon has prepared project trip estimates for the proposed additional 300,000 s.f. of office space
based on trip generation rates obtained from ITE’s Trip Generation, Eighth Edition, 2008. It is estimated
that the proposed 300,000 square foot of additional office space would generate an additional 3,126 daily
trips, with 411 trips (366 inbound and 45 outbound) occurring during the AM peak hour and 366 trips (51
inbound and 315 outbound) occurring during the PM peak hour.”
You can access the full report here: http://www.town.los-gatos.ca.us/documents/Community%20Development/Planning/Albright%20Way/Albright%20Way%20Initial%20Study%20and%20Mit.%20Neg%20Dec/Albright%20IS%20Attachment%205-Traffic%20Impact%20Analysis%20and%20Appendices_03-17-11-Online%20Versi_1.PDF
Back to our reasoning:
If you look at table 7 in their report, they actually gave the existing counts:
• PM peak hour traffic was actually counted at 168 when 467 is “expected”. That’s 299 cars that have been added to the current traffic count that don’t exist and don’t impact your commute today. That raises the base which of course will make the overall impact look to be less. 168 divided by 467 is 36% of what is expected with the new development.
• AM peak hour was counted at 125 when 401 is “expected”, so they added 276 cars that do not impact your commute today. Today’s traffic in this case is 31% of what is expected with the new development.
Therefore, if you take the higher percentage of the two, it appears that current trips at Albright are really 36% of 3014 (the number the report used as a base for today’s hypothetical traffic count – i.e., “ghost cars” are counted) or about 1085 actual trips per day. Their report would make you believe that 250,000 sq. ft. generates 3014 car trips per day when in fact only 1085 are actually generated by the current development.
We then extrapolated that 3014 trips is likely overstated by 1929 trips per day based on current utilization of the park. We feel drivers are able to relate to what the traffic is today, not what it would feel like based on the number of cars they think should have been there. In real time, we believe the proposed project of 550,000 would likely add a real 5060 trips a day (6145-1085) not a theoretical 3126. You can look at the report to understand how it came up with 6145 total car trips. We did not question that number as it was close to the trip generation numbers that we found in other studies on-line.
To put that in perspective: 6145 is 5.6 times more traffic than we currently experience in the area of Albright Way. But Albright will not exist in a vacuum, so to this number you should also add the new cars that will come from the new Sports Park and from the North 40. We believe these two projects, all less than .8 mile from Albright Way, will add over 20,000 more car trips for more than a whopping 25,000 additional cars once the developments are built out.
Our concern is about the cumulative affect all of these projects will have on Los Gatos. We’re bringing this data out to make everyone aware of what’s happening. It’s one thing to look at one project and hope that they have put forth correct data, but there are so many developments happening in such a short period of time that we became alarmed.
I hope you are too.
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