“We always hear traffic is increasing and I’m mystified why,” Councilwoman Diane McNutt said, noting that Census figures show the town’s population hasn’t really increased over the past decade.
Mayor Joe Pirzynski said. “People are afraid to have their children on the streets. And when you look at Main Street from the civic center at lunchtime, it must be a 25-minute commute and a 5-minute lunch” for Los Gatos High School students.
Vice Mayor Steve Rice picked up on that idea, saying he’d like to see town staff “craft something around improving traffic safety and flow at certain times of the day.”
The above council people gave these quotes to the Los Gatos Weekly early this year (2011).
These council people, the town manager (Larson) and the Director of Development (Rooney) believe that 3128 MORE car trips from Albright Way plus another ~4000-5000 MORE trips from the North 40 project can be mitigated by installing more stop lights and timing them. That’s 7000 plus cars less than one mile of each other using the same freeways and arterial streets in Los Gatos. That’s more than 7000 car-trips over and above current traffic levels. The Department of Transportation reminded them in that at rush hour, the metering lights are on and traffic may back up onto Lark, Bascom and Winchester.
From Caltrans, as they commented on Ms. Rooney’s report that said: “The project under Scenario 1 would not cause a significant impact on any of the study freeway segments” Her statement applied ONLY to the Albright project. Caltrans reply: “This reply is misleading because the project will add to some freeway segments that currently are operating at an unacceptable level of service (LOS) F.” Again, these statements do not add in the impact of the much larger North 40 impact.
Have you been on 17 or 85 at rush hour? It’s going to get much worse. There are even more projects coming your way, but these are the two biggest. Look at the Projects tab to see where the developments are happening.
Larry Arzie
These council members are twisting statistics to bolster misguided opinions in order to sway opinion. The additional traffic is not from new residents.
How stupid do they think we are. It is from peoples passing through town or using the town for destination locations. i.e. restaurants etc. Mr.Prizinski and Ms.McKnutt have for years attempted to de-gentrify the town and open it up to the populous by turning the Town into a tourist attraction, and food mall. With the current boom in housing going on they won’t be able to use those statistics much longer.
losgatosgirl
Does Diane McNutt have a day job where she has to commute and get to work at 8am or struggle to get home before 7pm because of the freeways and surface streets? I bet Diane can do her grocery shopping during the week and doesn’t have to drive through downtown on the weekends? I guess then, traffic isn’t so bad.