Along with the voters of Santa Cruz County, BATWG hopes that a passenger rail system operating along the Santa Cruz Beach line, initially between the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and Watsonville, would constitute the best use of the existing rail right-of-way.
Livermore, Pleasanton and Dublin residents have until November 1st to protest the dumping of thousands more Central Valley “cut-through” commuters onto local streets.
(See: https://205managedlanes.com/ and https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-10/district-10-current-projects/10-1h170. The “Notice of Preparation” is found here: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/district-6/documents/d6-environmental-docs/10-1h170/10-1h170-nop-1021-a11y.pdf)
Caltrans has issued a “Notice of Preparation” of environmental reports for widening of the entire 15-mile length of I-205, from I-5 through Tracy to I-580, into an eight-lane freeway. It now has six lanes.
Five westbound lanes presently narrow into the four westbound lanes of I-580 through congested Altamont Pass (three from I-205, two from I-580). This project would add a sixth lane funneling into Altamont Pass. As I-580 through Altamont Pass would not be enlarged, the new traffic would seek alternatives via Altamont Pass Road, Patterson Pass Road, and Corral Hollow/Tesla Road and traverse Livermore and Pleasanton neighborhood streets to return to I-580 or to gain access I-680 or SR 84 (Vallecitos Road), which itself is planned to be widened to a four-lane expressway.
To compound the impending traffic tsunami, SR 120 will be widened into a six-lane freeway between I-5 and SR 99, adding more Lathrop and Manteca traffic to I-205.
A widened I-205 would dump thousands of additional cars onto Tri-Valley streets. Why haven’t local politicians (e.g., Supervisors David Haubert and Nate Miley; Pleasanton, Dublin and Livermore City Councils) alerted their constituents about the impacts of the impending project? Perhaps it is because they will be out of office long before the voters of Tri-Valley feel its negative effects. Therefore, to fend off the destructive effects of the Caltrans plan, citizens must themselves be heard now.
Comments are due by November 1st by email to scott.guidi@dot.ca.gov, or by mail to Scott Guidi, Caltrans, District 10, 1976 East Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Stockton, CA 95205.
BATWG also encourages citizens to contact local city councils to ask them to take positions on the I-205 expansion: cityclerk@cityoflivermore.net; citycouncil@cityofpleasantonca.gov; council@dublin.ca.gov.
At the present time there are a number of regional plans ongoing in the Bay Area. Currently it takes years to get through the planning/environmental clearance process to project design, construction and start-up, consistent with available short-term, mid-term and long-term funding. There is an overriding need to streamline this process, in part by:
BATWG will have more to say on how the Region would benefit from expedited and more effective capital improvement programming and execution in subsequent issues of this newsletter.
The subject, previously dubbed “integrated transit systems”, (now shortened to “seamless transit”), has been discussed for decades.
Yet, even though Seamless Transit is supported in principle by almost everyone, not much has changed. (The Salesforce Transit Center is an exception, but even there the trains are still missing). The region’s assorted transit systems are mostly just as chopped up and disconnected as ever. Various reasons are advanced for this.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) released its draft Bay Area 2050 Plan on July 8, 2020. Following that milestone, public review and comment over the summer led to modifications and additions that are now being incorporated. These modifications escalated the Plan’s price tag by $668 billion, demonstrating the challenge of building support among the 100 government entities around the Bay. The final Plan Bay Area 2050 is expected to be adopted by the fall of 2021.
The Plan anticipates that the nine-county Bay Area will add 2.5 million new residents and 1.33 million new jobs between 2020 and 2050. The Plan envisions that by 2050 the Bay Area will be affordable, connected, diverse, healthy and vibrant. These aspirations are expressed through thirty-five strategies defined as policies or bundles of investments, clustered under eleven categories:
The estimated price of building the 4.8 mile BART extension through San Jose has increased again. It’s now up to $6.86 billion and rising. This all started because of downtown demands that the entire subway be built with no construction impact on Santa Clara Street. This short-sighted demand apparently stemmed from the misguided belief that constructing the two downtown stations using the standard cut-and-cover methods used all over the world for station construction would bring Santa Clara Street to a halt for the entire 4 to 6 year construction period. This is not true. As shown in the section below, at no time would the street be entirely closed. Here’s how it’s normally done. First, one half the street is excavated and decked over, after which the traffic is shifted to the decked half while the other half of the street is similarly excavated and decked. This phase of the project can be completed in a relatively short amount of time. Once the wooden decking is in place and traffic again flowing, the major below-grade construction work begins. At the end of the job the permanent new roadway is reconstructed, again in a relatively short amount of time and again while keeping at least half the street operating at all times.
Bay Area Transportation Working Group 