Instead of visiting the police station or showing up at the
Chamber of Commerce dinner, every elected official representing our
area should do what reporter
Kristen Munson did on Thanksgiving eve: Drive from Gilroy’s 10th
Street on Highway 152 to Casa de Fruta. Really, almost any Friday
will do.
Instead of visiting the police station or showing up at the Chamber of Commerce dinner, every elected official representing our area should do what reporter
Kristen Munson did on Thanksgiving eve: Drive from Gilroy’s 10th Street on Highway 152 to Casa de Fruta. Really, almost any Friday will do.
If that could somehow happen, we’d have a new highway connection from the Don Pacheco Y, where highways 152 and 156 converge, with U.S. 101 lickety split.
But alas, we have no magic wand. What we do have is a brave reporting soul who wrote a first-person story about her experiment that should be required reading for our state legislators, and officials from the San Benito County Council of Governments and Valley Transportation Authority. Kristen Munson left Gilroy around 5pm to brave the traffic and pulled into Casa de Fruta two hours and twenty four minutes later. The return trip took 18 minutes.
That statistic alone should be enough to get elected officials moving. Throw in the heavy accident rate on this 13-mile stretch of Highway 152 insanity – not to mention the accidents caused when people turn south at the Y – and you’d think there would be a stampede to fix it.
But, no, it’s more like a puff of smoke than a fire. And the next “fix” is more of a Band-Aid approach.
The $30 million flyover planned by the VTA will help alleviate the “good Samaritan” problem when motorists heading east on 152 graciously stop at the intersection – although they have no stop or yield sign – to let stacked-up westbound drivers make the turn.
If San Benito County officials don’t totally torpedo the project for provincial reasons, flyover construction could begin in 2006. Remember, though, that the VTA promised to build this flyover in 1996. Ten years later, what do we have? A two-hour and 24-minute trip from Gilroy to Casa de Fruta on one of the main arteries connecting coastal California to the Central Valley. If BART-to-San-Jose and light rail gobble up all the Santa Clara County sales tax dollars earmarked for transportation, it will be a marvel if any significant road projects get built.
As a county, our transportation fortunes on major road projects are tied to Santa Clara County’s desire to improve the gateway to Silicon Valley. Now, there seems to be some political will building in that county to get something done that can benefit us as well. As officials from the north decide how they want to divide up their transportation funding pie, it is time for us to throw in our two cents.
That means reopening the debate on building a new freeway from the Don Pacheco Y to U.S. 101 that would cut through San Benito County. Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage is throwing his support behind the idea, and the city of San Juan Bautista recently endorsed the 3-in-1 highway that would shift traffic off of highways 152, 156 and 25. Our local COG board has opposed against the idea in the past, but Supervisor Anthony Botelho, who also sits on COG, is going to try to change its mind.
Momentum for the project seems to be building. We urge our leaders to think about the trip Munson took, and reconsider the 3-in-1 project. With the potential clout of the VTA behind such a project, it is worth discussing the merits because we need a solution to this regional traffic nightmare.
