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City begins a neighborhood program for calming traffic
By Oakley Brooks
Members of two different neighborhoods sandwiched between main arterial streets in the city have initiated a process to calm traffic in their respective areas.
They are working under a fledgling system begun by the city in September, known as the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program.
Funded at $250,000 over the next five years under the citywide capital improvement project approved this past fall, Saratoga will use a traffic engineer from San Jose consultants Fehr & Pehrs to work alongside city and county sheriffs officials to develop neighborhood-generated solutions.
Other Bay Area cities and towns have used the neighborhood-based approach to traffic problems, including Cupertino and Danville, where City Manager Dave Anderson last worked.
In one end of the city, near Quito Village shopping center, residents are looking to control overflow traffic they say has been plaguing the neighborhood since Highway 85's only Saratoga exit opened nearby in 1994.
Members of the Village Green Neighborhood Association are facing similar problems at the other end of Saratoga, as commuters cut through their neighborhood to avoid the intersection of Highway 9 and Saratoga Avenue. Residents there say they are also cramped by parking associated with the nearby Saratoga Federated Church.
"Our overall concern is that our neighborhood has been turned into an artery and a parking lot," says Denise Michel, who has been the residents' point person in the traffic program. "It has traditionally been a quiet neighborhood, but the problems have been ignored for several years and it's reached a critical point."
Michel and residents of the old Village Green area became the first official group to embark on the new traffic program in December, after sending several letters to the city this past fall outlining their concerns.
They are hoping not only to diminish cut-through and parking problems, but also to re-establish the safety of the crosswalk at Highway 9 and Oak Place. Motorists typically ignore the crosswalk and travel through it at high speed.
Sheriffs deputies have done some evaluation in the Village Green area and issued parking citations and warnings, along with moving violations to try to curb the problems. They've also placed cones on the crosswalk and issued additional tickets to drivers who have failed to yield to pedestrians.
Under the new traffic program, Fehr & Pehrs engineer Sohrab Rashid will conduct more studies in the area and discuss problems further with residents to see if better enforcement and education can eliminate the chronic issues.
If not, neighbors could push for calming devices such as traffic circles, speed bumps and street-narrowing planters.
Smaller calming projects would be approved by the city's public safety commission, while those in excess of $5,000 would go before the city council.
Paseo Lado resident Emma Wyckoff says some complaints from the El Quito area, which were lodged with the public safety commission in June 2001, could be alleviated by a round of enforcement and education.
"The problems would be immediately improved if all the folks in Saratoga would slow down and stop running four-way stop signs," says Wyckoff.
But developing comprehensive solutions to cut-throughs between Saratoga Avenue and Quito Road may be more difficult; a proposal last year by sheriffs staff to limit turning onto certain side streets during peak hours prevented Wyckoff from getting to her house.
The El Quito area project will also have to work to get more neighborhoods involved--so far only Paseo Lado residents have gathered the requisite signatures from 50 percent-plus-one of households.
Regardless, Assistant City Manager Lorie Tinfow says Rashid will look at traffic patterns on streets surrounding Paseo Lado to ensure that any solutions on Paseo Lado don't dump the problem to nearby avenues.
Tinfow says that in this month, members of the Paseo Lado group will have their first meeting to begin roundtable discussions with local officials.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
