The Cupertino Courier

City may join Saratoga in backing Highway 85 report

By Sarah Lombardo

Stressing that they were not in a position to decide what should be done to reduce noise on Highway 85, members of the Saratoga City Council nevertheless vowed Feb. 4 to pursue the implementation of noise-reduction methods on the highway.

The Cupertino City Council is expected to discuss those methods at either the Feb. 17 or March 2 City Council meetings, according to Councilmember Don Burnett. Burnett represented Cupertino at the Saratoga meeting last week.

He said after the meeting that he believes Cupertino councilmembers are ready to join with Saratoga in lobbying at the state Capitol for the necessary funds to pay for the noise-reducing methods.

Saratoga councilmembers said during the meeting that they would bring up the freeway and the city's desire to implement noise-mitigation methods at meetings with Assemblyman Jim Cunneen and state Sen. Byron Sher scheduled for March.

Joan Hershkowitz, co-chairwoman of the Highway 85 Freeway Noise Abatement Committee, said she was satisfied with the Saratoga City Council's vow. "I think we got a strong statement from our council," she said. "I'm not unhappy."

The council's promise came after a report by Acentech, a noise-reduction consultant firm based in Thousand Oaks, on ways the freeway could be made quieter. Commissioned in March 1996 by Caltrans after the uproar from residents in Cupertino and Saratoga reached the ears of Cunneen and Sher, the $100,000 report was completed in January. Suggestions for the road included reducing the speed limit on the freeway from 65 to 55 mph, resurfacing the road with open-graded asphalt concrete, increasing the height of sound walls in some areas and adding surface noise-absorption material to the sound walls in some locations. Acentech estimates that each method individually will lower the noise from Highway 85 by about three to four decibels.

Acentech officials stressed, however, that the level by which noise could be reduced per method could not be added together if more than one method was implemented. Todd Busch, a member of the research team from Acentech who worked on the report, said, for example, that reducing speed and repaving the road--each of which could lower noise on the freeway by about three decibels--together would not necessarily equal a reduction in noise of six decibels. But when pressed by Councilwoman Gillian Moran, Busch estimated that implementing all four methods on the freeway could result in a reduction of between seven and 10 decibels.

Busch said the group took into account the costs of each method vs. the benefit and the installation and maintenance costs to determine the four recommendations.

Burnett said of the four methods, he believes changing the pavement and providing an absorbent covering for the walls stand out as excellent choices for reducing noise.

"Those two things would make things quieter for everyone involved," Burnett said.

Hershkowitz, who has been active on the issue since the freeway's opening in October 1994, told the Saratoga council she thought it was time something once and for all was done about the noise.

"It's been three years. It's time to just do it," she said. "It's time for the council to go ahead with the implementation of the findings of the report."

Hershkowitz said she and FNAC co-chairman George Korbay would like to see a test corridor along the freeway created to try out the recommendations of the report, and asked the council to put its political strength behind the idea.

"We've asked for a corridor, not the whole state," she said.

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