 |
|
|
|
|
Sobrato development offers a transit opportunity
By Rod Diridon
After 20 years of planning and supporting transit, Los Gatos finally has an opportunity to act by approving the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) embodied in Sobrato Development's Los Gatos Gateway Project. Since 1982, Los Gatos Town Council members have participated in and supported the adoption of the Vasona Transit Corridor. The Los Gatos General Plan includes a light rail station on Winchester Boulevard at Highway 85; and town policy encourages its construction.
The town's approval of that TOD, mixing housing and offices on property adjacent to the future Vasona Station, would fulfill its commitment to the Vasona Corridor Project. It is exactly the kind of TOD that transit planners encourage near rail stations.
Two studies by the Mineta Transportation Institute (http://transweb.sjsu.edu) show that expansion of the regional transit system and redirecting growth into greater densities around transit stations is working. We are accommodating growth without urban sprawl and beginning to make progress in reducing traffic congestion and air pollution.
Our studies find that residents of low-density neighborhoods surrounding rail transit actually benefit from TOD around the stations. TOD adds value to neighborhoods as well as to local communities and our regional quality of life. In a few years, BART will join our South Bay transit system, and studies show that BART and Caltrain stations also enhance surrounding property values.
A consensus has existed for some time in the valley that reliance on traditional patterns of low-density urban development accessed exclusively by automobile exacerbate traffic problems. Los Gatos residents have twice approved transit measures by nearly a 3-to-1 margin. As a result, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) included the Vasona Corridor in a regional light rail system with 56 miles of track and 46 stations. VTA is now building the extension to Winchester in Campbell and is seeking funds for the final mile and a half to Vasona.
As we developed the transit system, however, we learned quickly that building transit lines alone would not redirect large number of people out of automobiles into trains. To succeed, transit must impact development patterns. The primary vehicle for achieving this impact is the TOD, and cities throughout the system have approved higher densities for homes, jobs, retail and recreation around transit stations.
The TOD concept is simple: the closer to a station, the higher the density. Ideally, TOD encompasses mixed-use developments that simultaneously provide people leaving their homes to begin their commutes and people arriving at jobs to end their commutes. This mix promotes efficiency by providing passengers in both directions, just as Sobrato proposes for Los Gatos.
The greatest strength of Transit-Oriented Development is that it redirects growth rather than fights growth with artificial restrictions that don't work over the long term and also diminish the lifestyles of existing residents. The concept accepts that with a strong economy and continued migration, Silicon Valley cannot eliminate population growth or demand for homes, jobs and travel by automobile, but we can focus growth and reduce sprawl, congestion and air pollution that affect us all.
Los Gatos is fortunate to have the Vasona industrial/commercial area on the Campbell side of the freeway. By directing growth in housing and jobs to this area, the low-density neighborhoods throughout the rest of the town will remain much as they are today. The Vasona area also offers an opportunity to connect people throughout the town to the regional transportation system through an existing railroad corridor.
VTA surveys show that a mixed-used TOD project located adjacent to the Vasona Station that also offers incentives to use transit can reduce automobile traffic from the project by 15 to 20 percent. Furthermore, since the TOD project would be instrumental in attracting light rail to the site, and these same reductions apply to all the other property within 2,000 feet of the station, then the project could result in a net reduction in local traffic. Any project that supports the extension of the rail systems certainly reduces traffic regionally and benefits us all.
Rod Diridon is executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute. Neither he nor the Mineta Transportation Institute have financial relationships in any way with the Sobrato Development Corporation.
|
|
|
|
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
