We live in a neighborhood that has suffered from the late 20th century suburban sprawl mentality, the mindset that set LOS (Level of Service) for automobile trips as the most important transportation planning metric. Our little neighborhood was built in the late 40’s and into the 50’s to provide housing to a nearby military base, and was bounded to the south of a U.S. highway and to the north by a relatively small east-west route across the valley. In the 60’s and 70’s the U.S. highway was converted to a freeway to enable faster movement for automobile traffic, at least that was the theory. And in the 70’s the area to the east started transforming into bedroom communities for growing businesses in Silicon Valley, and the quiet little cross valley road became an expressway, then in the late 80’s and into the early 90’s was converted into a freeway. And the quiet little neighborhood became an isolated island, trapped between two freeways with the north-south streets to the west and east becoming high-speed arterials feeding more and more automobiles onto those freeways. There are few services in the neighborhood, unless your idea of service is a “men’s club” (aka “exotic dance establishment”), so trying to get from here to places of employment, shopping, and services has meant a trip in a car for most folks. It took a truly brave soul to try to exit from this ‘island’ on foot, on a bicycle, or in a wheelchair. Those who planned for moving more automobiles over greater distances never conceived that folks might want to use some of these alternative transportation modalities as they went about their lives.
Last Wednesday the isolation ended. A few forward thinking folks started a process almost 15 years ago to provide an alternative north-south route across town, a way to avoid the high-speed arterials feeding traffic onto the two freeways, a way that would be friendly to bicyclists, pedestrians, and the disabled. The key piece to using this route, a street that once had intersections with the roads that are now freeways, was to get either under or over the freeways. And it is much more cost-effective to go over, and much easier to keep open year-around (most undercrossings around here are closed during periods of heavy precipitation). After a long process, with some opposition, bridges over both freeways were built and they opened last Wednesday. The Wife and I can now exit and head to the northeast without having to fight our way past the 9-lane ‘monster’ intersection where the nominally 45MPH Mathilda Avenue intersects with CA-237, or we can head south to the grocery store without having to fight freeway off and on-ramp traffic on either Mathilda or Fair Oaks, both posted at 45MPH with no accomodations for cyclists or pedestrians. It is so much more pleasant. About the only downside is that the U-shaped bridges are trash magnets; the openings face east and the westerlies tend to blow trash that gets trapped on the bridge. Maybe it is time for an ‘adopt a bridge’ cleanup program.
And it is bridge opening month as another new bicycle/pedestrian bridge will open over I-280 on the south edge of town this Thursday providing better access into Cupertino and points to the southwest. Now if we could get better access to get around the entanglements surrounding the San Jose airport then the thorniest issues I have had riding in Santa Clara County will have been mitigated.
