October 4, 2007

A vision of things to come

Almaden Expressway development plans top AVCA discussions

By Lorraine Gabbert
Staff Writer

In an animated conversation, residents and representatives from Santa Clara County’s Roads and Airports Department discussed the future development of Almaden Expressway at Monday evening’s Almaden Valley Community Association (AVCA) meeting.

Dan Colleen, deputy director of Santa Clara County’s Roads and Airports Department, illustrates traffic hot spots along the Almaden Expressway and shares plans for solving these problems.

“The top four worst traffic intersections on Almaden Expressway are Blossom Hill Road, Coleman Road, Branham Lane and the 85 freeway connections,” said Dan Colleen, deputy director of the Roads and Airports Department. “I’m relieved to report that we have a project that will address three out of four.”

About 150,000 vehicles currently use Almaden Expressway daily, and with the proposed development of Whole Foods and Coyote Valley, that number will likely increase. With this in mind, the Roads and Airports Department, which is responsible for preserving, operating and enhancing the county's expressways, is planning for the future.

The intersection of Almaden Expres-sway and Blossom Hill Road ranks in the top 10 worst intersections of the county’s eight expressways. “This cancer is killing the host,” said one resident. “They’re building the second largest Whole Foods in the United States at that intersection. You think it’s a problem now, just wait. The county has to stand up on its hind legs and tell San Jose that they’re wrecking people’s lives (The expressways are controlled by the county, while streets are by the city). They need to spend some money to change things. It’s a mess over there, and it’s just going to keep getting worse and Coyote Valley is going to put the Coup de Grace on this whole area.”

Comprehensive study
Well aware of the situation, in its 2003 Comprehensive County Expressway Planning Study, the department created a guideline for alleviating traffic problem areas on the 8.5-mile Almaden Expressway by adding signage, designating freeway access lanes and improving intersections.

According to Colleen, the county proposes four lanes of traffic northbound, south of Blossom Hill Road, with two directing freeway traffic. Incorporating overhead signage to clarify matters, lane 4 (closest to right-hand shoulder) would be designated for the 85 Freeway south, and lane 3 for 85 north. When the undeveloped parcel (Arcadia property) is developed, the county would like to see the developer add another lane to the northbound 85 exit ramp to Almaden Expressway.

To deal with shopping center traffic, plans are in the works to widen Almaden Plaza Way to the north and add another lane out, resulting in two dedicated right lanes, two dedicated left lanes and a through-lane crossing to the freeway entrance. A future concept is to create a ramp looping from the edge of the percolation pond to Almaden Plaza Way, bringing traffic onto Almaden Expressway on the east side, so that 85 traffic would have a separate ramp, separating it from Almaden Plaza.

The department is also interested in working with area businesses to alleviate traffic flow issues. “We look forward to seeing what the Whole Foods project has planned,” said Colleen. “And their traffic improvement suggestions for the Almaden Expressway and Blossom Hill Road intersection.”

The department suggests adding an eastbound turn-off lane from Blossom Hill Road to northbound Almaden Expressway. It would also like to work with Best Buy to explore adding a left-hand turn lane out of its parking lot.

Southbound, along Almaden Expressway, the plan is to add a fourth lane for through traffic through the Branham Lane intersection, maintaining a right-hand turn lane. To relieve traffic problems by the carwash at Cherry Avenue, they would square the corner. (On Almaden Expressway, the connection on the west side is called Cherry, while the east is Chynoweth). At this time, there is not a right-hand turn onto Chynoweth, but that might change with the relocation of a telephone pole and sidewalk improvements.

Coyote Valley Specific Plan
The county and its Roads and Airports Department considered the Coyote Valley Specific Plan’s Environmental Impact Report (CVSP EIR), which proposes adding 50,000 jobs and 20,000 housing units lacking in traffic impact detail.

“We responded to the city’s Environmental Impact Report,” said Colleen, dropping a 200-page tome on the table. “The city says they have 2,000 pages of comments in response to the EIR. This is the county’s reaction, 10 percent of those comments.”

Most significant from the department’s point of view is that the CVSP EIR underestimated external road system trips. “The EIR made unreasonable assumptions about traffic routing, especially spillover from 101 when it becomes clogged,” he said. “It’s unclear about what improvements are proposed and when; especially regarding Bailey over the Hill and underestimated traffic impacts on Almaden Expressway, because of assumptions about Bailey Avenue over the Hill.”

Colleen noted that the EIR assessed the impacts of determined mitigations based upon the whole build with no consideration of phasing or partial build-out. “The county is particularly concerned with the short-term condition determinations of impacts for a project expected to take 25 to 50 years to build,” he says. “It suggests that the impact of mitigation analysis didn’t have a lot of correlation with reality.”

Dawn S. Cameron, consulting transportation planner, agreed. She believes the EIR was incomplete regarding the traffic impact of each plan phase of the plan. “The original EIR had one sentence to cover that,” she said. “Basically, it said that there may be impacts from an interim phase, but they will go away when it’s all built. That’s OK if you’re going to build the whole thing in two years, but it may take 50. A major traffic impact sitting there for 15 years unmitigated is unacceptable.”

AVCA members are intrigued by the county’s plan to alleviate traffic congestion along Almaden Expressway. Photos by Lorraine Gabbert

The department is awaiting the reissued EIR to see how it identifies feasible and necessary traffic mitigations. “The EIR walked away from specific mitigation impacts on 101,” says Colleen, “or an additional funding plan.”

The county suggests that the ongoing South County Circulation Study, conducted by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), be completed first and its outcome used as a guide for traffic impacts and mitigations or contributions for regional fund use and regional impact fees.

Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) law, the city is required to identify impacts and provide mitigation where feasible, but the city council may cite an overriding consideration. “We suggested that the document reconsider how the existing road network can best be used to support and relieve valley traffic. If in intervening time, we were able to get a multi-agency agreement on the South County Circulation Study on a build-out plan for South County, including Morgan Hill and Gilroy, it would be an opportunity for Coyote Environmental to use it as a base document, something everybody could agree on and put belief in.”

Cameron is concerned that spillover traffic has not been adequately considered. “They say that the 101 freeway will come to a standstill and people will stay on 101. The other thing that needs to be clarified is what’s going to happen with Bailey over the hill. If it’s expanded to four lanes, we expect a lot more traffic on McKean and Almaden Expressway, and the city would have to mitigate that.”

For more information from the County of Santa Clara Roads and Airport Department, including live video feeds of Almaden Expressway, or to make traffic signal service requests, visit www.countyroads.org. To view the Comprehensive County Expressway Planning Study Implementation Plan, see: www.expressways.info.