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Village Green residents seek median if nearby stoplight is installed By Kate Carter If the city wants a stoplight at the intersection of Highway 9 and Oak Street, then some Village Green neighbors want a traffic median there to discourage drivers from using their residential streets to avoid nearby thoroughfares. The city council hasn't granted them the median yet, but it did ask city staff to create a committee, including representatives from both the Village Green neighborhood east of Highway 9 and Oak Street to the west, to determine the worth of the plan. The council action effectively removed that proposal from the Village Green's involvement with the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program (NTMP), as it is outside the fledgling program's limitations. The median had been suggested by participants in the NTMP as well as some involved with the discussion surrounding the now-defunct idea of a public safety center at the corner of Saratoga Avenue and Highway 9, said Assistant City Manager Lorie Tinfow at the July 17 council meeting. The intersection stoplight was also in the discussion about the center and has been strongly supported by the council as necessary to increase pedestrian safety crossing the busy roads. Residents in the Village Green neighborhood, who were the first participants in the new NTMP in January, are interested in the idea, as they fear a stoplight at an entrance to their neighborhood would increase the number of drivers trying to avoid backups there and at the Saratoga Avenue-Highway 9 intersection by driving past their homes. They say the problem is already very significant—Village Green Neighborhood Association co-president Denise Michel said the neighborhood gets between 800 and 1,000 passing cars a day, far more than the expected 60 for an area its size. She said many of those drivers are commuters from Los Gatos who turn right onto Oak Place from Highway 9 in the morning on their way to Highway 85, and then turn left from Saratoga Avenue onto La Paloma Avenue, Orchard Road or Park Place to get back to Highway 9 in the evening. Also, some parents drive their children to school at Saratoga Elementary on Oak Street by driving through the Village Green to cross Highway 9 from Oak Place. The median, Michel said, could help stop some of that. It would be designed like a lamb chop in the center of the intersection and would prevent drivers from Oak Place from turning left onto Highway 9 and drivers from Highway 9 from turning left onto Oak Street. It would not prevent drivers from Highway 9 from turning right onto Oak Place, however, but that could be limited during peak hours by installing a "No Right Turn" sign there, effective 6 to 9 a.m. "I think it only fair that you consider this remediation," Michel said. "The light was the impetus for the median idea." The plan, though, is beyond NTMP's scope—the traffic mitigation measure would actually be located outside the affected neighborhood, and NTMP concentrates on small traffic mitigation approaches accomplished within the affected areas. The median would also cost $70,000, which itself is over NTMP's yearly budget of $50,000 for the entire city, Tinfow said. Instead, it would be placed into the city's Capital Improvement Projects fund, she said. In addition, the median would have to be approved by 60 percent of the neighborhood residents in order to move forward, and the participating residents didn't believe they could get that level of support, Tinfow said. So, they wanted the council to allow them to pursue the median project outside the NTMP rules and only need the support of a simple majority of residents. The council, however, said the median would affect traffic in more than just the Village Green Neighborhood and could have unexpected spillover effects throughout the area. It approved the removal of the median project from the NTMP, rather than change the NTMP process to meet its specific needs. But it asked that city staff invite a representative from each side of the intersection to meet with representatives from the Saratoga Fire District and the Saratoga Federated Church, both of which would also be affected by changes in nearby traffic patterns, as well as Councilmen Stan Bogosian and John Mehaffey, to discuss the concept. Other traffic improvement projects for Village Green will remain within the NTMP process. |
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