The light at the end of the …. bridge?

In the not too distant past highway projects were initiated with the primary goal of moving motorized vehicular traffic from point A to point B as quickly as possible without much thought about the impacts on neighborhoods or other forms of transport. In some places that still happens today. Over the past thirty some odd years two such projects have created a triangle of isolation in northern Santa Clara county, a triangle some have called the ‘Golden Triangle’ while others have dubbed it the ‘Bermuda Triangle’.

It all started with the conversion of US Highway 101 in the area from a highway to a freeway. Some roads that had crossed the highway were blocked on both sides of the now freeway. In the late 80’s and early 90’s California Highway 237 was converted from a highway to a freeway. Again, some roads were blocked on both sides, a precious few got under/overpass connectivity, and even fewer still got access ramps to the freeways. The roads with access ramps to these freeways, all generally north-south roads, became de facto expressways, carrying volumes of motorized vehicles at usually high speeds to the freeways. Sidewalks and/or bicycle lanes along these corridors were afterthoughts at best, often left out or neglected as the goal of traffic engineers was to move maximum numbers of autos in the shortest period of time. Automobile LoS (Level of Service) was king. The upshot of this was that alternative modes of transport in this area became difficult to impossible. And the neighborhoods caught in this triangle became isolated to a degree; the only sane way out, or so most think, is in an automobile and even then it is often a harrowing experience trying to enter heavy traffic in a 45MPH zone when actual average speeds are often much, much higher. Forget about the poor guy in the wheelchair, like the one I saw trying to go south on Mathilda over the 101 overpass a while back. He risks his life to get to the south side of the freeway where all the services are located, then will have to do another ‘Frogger’ expedition to return home.

Some relief now looks to be in sight. Sunnyvale plans on building two bridges, one over California 237 and the other over US 101, both aligned with Borregas Ave.  Borregas was a major north-south corridor through the area in the pre-freeway era and now mostly a quiet neighborhood street south of 237 and a corridor of light industry north of 237. The bridges will be built to move pedestrians and cyclists and skaters and all sorts of non-motorized transport across the great dividing lines we call freeways. The grades will be gentle, all ADA compliant with nothing greater than 5%. Curves will be broad and wide so that tandems and trailers can use the bridges easily. And construction should start this fall, I hope. After a delay for federal review, a delay reportedly caused by heightened oversite in the wake of the “Big Dig” fiasco, the project went to bid last month, three bids were received, and while they exceeded engineer estimates they are within budget and after due diligence review the City Council will be asked to approve a contract sometime in the next few weeks. The only ‘negative’ news is that the desired ‘fancy fencing’ that had been planned would cost about $2.3M extra so plain old ‘projectile’ chain link will be used instead. I was thinking how nice the bridges would be as I crossed US 101 at Fair Oaks last night, with the shoulder disappearing near the top of the overpass then finding a constant line of cars exiting from the freeway into a new right-hand lane that I would have to ease into at the bottom.   It will be so much nicer when I can just cruise up Borregas and cross on a bridge without exhausted commuters in cars jockeying for space, without having to deal with 4 or 6 lanes of exhaust spewing traffic doing 40, 50, 60 MPH.   I plan on being one of the first over the bridges, and plan on pulling the trailer, just because it will be possible.