Every Wednesday I drive to Gilroy for business, and this past
Wednesday I was routed onto the new turnoff from San Felipe Road
onto Highway 25. That means that the previous Wednesday was the
last time that I, personally, drove on the old turnoff.
Every Wednesday I drive to Gilroy for business, and this past Wednesday I was routed onto the new turnoff from San Felipe Road onto Highway 25. That means that the previous Wednesday was the last time that I, personally, drove on the old turnoff.
I don’t know when during the intervening week the switch was actually made, but where was the marching band? Where was the fanfare? How about a commemorative bandanna?
We have waited so long for the Highway 25 bypass to get started that when part of it is actually completed, I would expect more of a fuss.
Then, thinking about it some more, I realized I had driven out of the Nob Hill parking lot and not seen the road graders and other equipment and barriers that had marked the work on that part of the project. When did they disappear?
This is not really a column about my failure to pay attention, but rather a comment on how, among all the frustrations of local politics and the various infrastructure problems we have, sometimes things really do happen.
Can anybody really remember what it was like before the 156 bypass? Downtown merchants predicted their business would dry up without people being forced through part of downtown on their way west to highway 156. As it turns out, the only people we lost were the ones who were forced into downtown by being lost and confused, and they weren’t in the mood to buy anything anyway.
Either that, or they stopped in at one of the bars to calm down, and became a potential law-enforcement opportunity.
The other loss from the bypass is the occasional tractor trailer who missed the signs to turn left on Santa Ana Road and right on McCray to get a straight shot west on Fourth Street, thereby having to wedge his rig through traffic in a sharp right turn at Fourth. Entertaining to watch unless your car was first in line to turn left going the other way. The sight of a giant fender aiming at your side mirror could be a little too exciting.
Even so, that project has gone through the cycle from proposal, controversy, construction nuisance, novelty to no-big-deal and most of us now sail along it or past it without much thought.
I can’t remember, if I ever knew, why the Highway 25 bypass took so much longer to get going, but the progress seems to be satisfactory and before long we’ll be enjoying a more livable downtown and safer walks to several of our schools.
