The news keeps getting better for San Benito County commuters
holding their breath for a better commute.
Work crew availability and contractor timeliness, Valley
Transportation Authority officials said, are allowing them to
forecast an even earlier completion date for the U.S. 101 widening
project.
The news keeps getting better for San Benito County commuters holding their breath for a better commute.
Work crew availability and contractor timeliness, Valley Transportation Authority officials said, are allowing them to forecast an even earlier completion date for the U.S. 101 widening project.
The project’s completion date for the highway’s southbound lanes was originally slated for September and moved up to late March last fall. VTA officials are projecting an “early March” end date.
“If you look at all of the recent VTA projects, early completion has been emphasized. We were able to meet that goal this time and we’re very happy with that,” said Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer, who serves on the VTA board. “We were even looking at completing this by late February, but we had some weather issues that didn’t allow for that.”
The overall project will increase the northbound and southbound two- and three-lane configurations to four lanes from Cochrane Road in Morgan Hill to Metcalf Road in San Jose. A related project, slated for completion in July 2004, will connect carpool lanes on 101 with those on Highway 85 in south San Jose. Coordination between the two projects puts the opening of the northbound U.S. 101 lanes at mid-April, the VTA said.
VTA board members had a running inside joke that the southbound lanes would be finished by the time the Costco – a popular warehouse-style supermarket – opens in Gilroy. So far, Costco will squeak by first when it holds its ribbon-cutting ceremony March 1.
Already, U.S. 101 drivers are being directed onto new pavement as crews do “finishing” and “shoulder repair” work, said John Pilger, a VTA spokesman. Lane shifts will continue until all the work is completed.
“We’ve been doing various lane shifts. Until everything is done motorists need to look for workers and traffic advisory signs,” Pilger said.
Once completed, the work is expected to cut the morning northbound commute by more than 12 minutes and the evening southbound trip by more than nine. More significantly, for drivers who get easily frustrated with the normal stop and go for that area, average speeds will jump from 28 mph to 65 mph northbound and from 35 mph to 65 mph going south.
Springer said the widening project will not only ease the commutes of workers, it could bring more tourism to the area, too.
“In so many ways, this is a quality-of-life issue. We’re talking about adding 10 minutes to a person’s life and taking away a whole lot of frustration people feel when they’re stuck in a bottleneck,” Springer said. “Right now, you have people asking themselves, ‘Why should I go down there to shop?'”
When the work is completed, Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission will determine whether the carpool lanes will be restricted to vehicles with at least two persons inside all day, or whether carpooling is mandatory only during peak traffic hours.
Pilger said VTA was not planning any sort of campaign to encourage more carpooling.
“The incentive is if you carpool, you’ll save time. We’re sort of borrowing from the idea of ‘if you build it, they will come,'” Pilger said. “After this work is done it still will be imperative for drivers to get out of the one-person one-car mindset.”
The U.S. 101 widening costs $52.2 million, paid mostly with Measure B funds, approved by voters in 1996.
The carpool lane project for U.S. 101 and Highway 85 totals $62.1 million. More than half the project is paid for with Measure B funds.
