It’s difficult to overstate the importance of improving the
roads that make up the southern gateway to our region and the rest
of Silicon Valley.
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of improving the roads that make up the southern gateway to our region and the rest of Silicon Valley.
We applaud the Valley Transportation Agency of Santa Clara County for taking a lead in finding a way to solve the traffic and safety problems that currently exist.
Highways 25, 152 and 156 are heavily used roadways that connect the Bay Area with the Central Valley and beyond. They are dangerous thoroughfares that have claimed at least 48 lives just since the year 2000, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Six options – with price tags ranging from $700 million to more than $1 billion – are under study. Politicians and traffic experts will have to do a delicate balancing act with competing interests – environmental impacts, time urgency and high price tags in lean economic times.
One concern, however, that they should not fret over is the fiction perpetuated by many slow-growth advocates that imprvoing these highways will be “growth inducing.” Clearly, growth has already happened. Hundreds of thousands of people risk their lives by using these highways every day – many of them to commute between jobs in Silicon Valley and more affordable housing in San Benito County and the Central Valley.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 8,000 of San Benito County’s nearly 23,000 workers – 35 percent – commuted to Santa Clara County for work in 2000. The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments expects an increase of 129 percent of workers – another 8,300 workers – commuting from San Benito County to Santa Clara County between 2000 and 2020.
Whether or not the highways are adequate for the volume of traffic, people are using them already – and will continue to do so in ever-increasing numbers.
Anyone who advocates for not improving the region’s highways in the name of slow-growth idealism bears some measure of responsibility for those who die in grisly, preventable accidents on these highways.
Transportation officials must choose the best plan for the entire region – keeping in mind not only environmental concerns, which are important, but also practicalities of keeping time frames as short as possible and price tags as low as possible.
We urge elected officials and governmental bodies from San Benito and Santa Clara counties and the VTA to flex their political muscle to develop a timely, affordable fix for the region’s highways. It is a matter of life and death.
