By Clarence Cromwell
New signaling equipment, signs and turn lanes the City Council has decided to install on Saratoga Avenue will ease some of the traffic problems created by the opening of Route 85.
But drivers may still have to endure backups at the Saratoga interchange metering lights, a Caltrans spokesperson said.
City Manager Harry Peacock asked Caltrans to adjust the lights and install signs near the Saratoga Avenue-Route 85 interchange.
In a March 4 letter to Paul Hensley, Caltrans' highway operations division chief, Peacock said that cars fill onramps during morning and evening commute hours, with queues sometimes stretching across the intersection.
Peacock said the problem occurs even when freeway traffic is flowing smoothly at 50 mph.
He asked Hensley to have the metering lights adjusted so that cars can merge onto the highway sooner and to install "No Right on Red" signs in both directions approaching the interchange to keep cars from waiting in the intersection to turn.
Peacock also asked for a "Prepare to Stop" sign in front of the freeway overpass. Motorists involved in rear-end accidents there have said that because of the structure and the dip in the road beneath it, they didn't see cars stopped under the freeway for the interchange's traffic signal.
Caltrans is investigating the problems, Senior Transportation Engineer Rod Oto said March 12.
"We've got some people going out to do it within the next day or two," Oto said. "As far as adjusting the timing (of metering lights), we're actually doing that on an ongoing basis."
He said Caltrans officials believe that traffic backs up on Saratoga Avenue whenever the metering lights are on. The northbound onramp is metered during the morning commute. The southbound ramp is metered during the evening commute.
But Caltrans may not make a noticeable change in the metering lights, Oto said.
"We're looking at it in terms of how changes at this ramp will affect other locations," he explained. "If you let traffic on at one location, they're going to go downstream and affect other entrances. There's probably more than a 50-50 chance we won't make a significant change at the Saratoga onramp."
"Our focus has been to maintain a steady flow along 85," Oto continued. "We're trying to balance the metering flow along the corridor. If you speed it up at one location, you have to slow it down somewhere else to compensate. It kind of goes back partly to the decision to only build one interchange in Saratoga. It concentrates all the traffic in one place, and as a consequence you have problems like that."
Meanwhile, the City Council acted to clear up other traffic problems related to the highway.
Recent studies show that the additional traffic on Saratoga Avenue from the freeway creates problems for drivers at certain intersections.
On March 12, Public Works Director Larry Perlin asked the City Council to spend up to $115,000 on a new traffic signal at Saratoga Avenue and Scotland Drive. The council will vote on the expenditure at its March 20 meeting.
The decision to install the light at Scotland Drive drew sighs of relief from area residents, some of whom have petitioned the city with recent letters asking for a light.
"I'm very pleased to see how they responded," said Melinda Ghavi, a Via Grande Drive resident. "These guys seemed to really want to do something about it."
Ghavi said she witnessed four accidents at the Scotland-Saratoga intersection during the last year. Reports from the Public Works Department showed eight accidents at the intersection during 1995, seven of them involving broadside collisions.
The accidents occur when drivers try to turn left from Scotland onto busy Saratoga Avenue, area residents said. The maneuver became dangerous, Ghavi wrote, after the opening of the freeway increased traffic on Saratoga Avenue.
A traffic study released by the city showed that a third more cars used that section of Saratoga Avenue, compared to before Route 85 opened.
Maintenance and operation costs for the new signal would amount to $3,600 a year. But the new signal would save the city $5,500 to $11,000 by allowing it to eliminate one or both of the school crossing guards at the intersection.
Another measure may not involve new city expenditures.
A Clean Air grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District could help the city wire together computers that control the stop signals along Saratoga Avenue, from Cox Avenue to Fruitvale, buy new software to control the lights and install a new computer for the light at Saratoga and Cox.
The small computers, contained in metal roadside cabinets, control the order in which signal lights turn green and the length of green and red lights for each lane of traffic approaching an intersection. If wired together and controlled by a central computer, they could ensure that drivers hit several green lights in a row while traveling Saratoga Avenue.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, March 20, 1996.
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