The town tried diverting traffic this summer to address the issues of cut-through traffic. Did it help? A report issued suggests it helped some neighborhoods, but business owners saw a drop in foot traffic. (Photograph by George Sakkestad)
The southbound Highway 17 on ramp at Wood Road will be open Saturday and Sundayas the town winds down its summertime effort to keep weekend beach-goers off local streets. Data collected about cut-through drivers throughout the summer was released during Tuesday night’s town council meeting and public hearing.
The figures show that southbound traffic on Los Gatos Boulevard approaching Highway 9 increased by 17 percent this year over last. Further, traffic entering downtown on either North Santa Cruz or University avenues increased by 12 percent.
Although Parks and Public Works Director Matt Morley said the Wood Road on ramp closure appears to have been a positive for downtown’s Almond Grove neighborhood, he acknowledged that residents north of Highway 9 are experiencing spillover traffic from the closure.
Morley’s report wasn’t the only factor that is now forcing the council to reconsider the Wood Road closure for next summer.
“What you guys have done has almost put us out of business,” Time Out Clothing owner Ginger Rowe said.
Romantiques owner Susan Testa spoke of unintended consequences—namely a decline in downtown foot traffic and retail sales.
“We experienced this decline in foot traffic and sales on weekends as soon as the (Wood Road) diversion came into effect,” Testa said. “This decline was also on the heels of record sales in May, so I believe there’s a direct correlation between the road closure at Wood Road and the decrease in business.”
Testa and Rowe urged the town to scrap the closure.
The council also heard from interim Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Chief Mike D’Antonio, who explained that one supervisor and four officers, including a motorcycle officer, are now on duty on weekends.
“The motor officer has a greater ability to traverse the roadways when traffic is impacted,” D’Antonio said.
The chief also said the town has been divided into three “beats,” or geographic areas, so when an incident occurs, the beat officer is already nearby and can respond more quickly.
Assistant Santa Clara County Fire Chief Tony Bowden said the fire department has also made adjustments to account for traffic.
“The Los Gatos station on University and Redwood Estates up on the hill are core stations,” Bowden said. “The moment those stations are out for an extended period of time … we start backfilling from the rest of the district, so we are able to maintain that town coverage at all times.”
Morley, meanwhile, proposed a pilot program that would change streets like Cherry Blossom Lane, Englewood Avenue and Hilow Road from residential “collector” streets to just plain residential. He hopes changing the street type in a state database will influence traffic applications from sending people to those neighborhoods.
“The mapping applications all actually pull their information from the state database,” Morley said. “So, we’d like to see what happens if we change those streets to just residential streets to see if that has an impact on the mapping software.”
However, he offered little hope for a town-wide solution.
“We don’t believe there’s a solution that will keep traffic off of our arterial streets—our bigger streets like Los Gatos Boulevard or even Blossom Hill Road or Shannon and Kennedy, to some extent,” Morley said. “But we really want to make an effort at managing the residential streets and try and help traffic stay on the bigger streets that are meant to carry that load.”
The town council voted to immediately start reclassifying approximately 20 residential collector streets.
Since it’s generally acknowledged that traffic apps like Waze and Google Maps are neighborhood traffic-generating culprits, some residents directed their anger toward them. In fact, Councilman Steve Leonardis wants to sue them.
Town attorney Rob Schultz wasn’t optimistic about a small town’s chances going up against huge corporations like Apple and Google, but said he’d look into the possibility of litigation.
Vice Mayor Rob Rennie asked that the town reconsider its stance against widening Highway 17.
The town council plans to hold another public hearing to discuss cut-through traffic, but it did not set a date for that discussion. The council hopes to decide summer 2018 traffic plans early in the new year.
