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Before the AMC Mercado shopping center was even built, the nearby Fairwood neighborhood residents were concerned about the traffic their streets would suffer. And their worst fears have been realized. Cars race down the streets as a back way to the shopping center. The city has posted low-speed signs, but these meager efforts have not slowed the traffic. It's only getting worse.
This neighborhood has been concerned about non-neighborhood, cut-through traffic for many years, starting as early as 1984 when developers drew up plans for the Mercado. Now residents in the neighborhood are asking the city to take action on traffic-calming efforts suggested by a traffic study completed one year ago.
The city hasn't concentrated on the area because of two additional traffic studies in other parts of Sunnyvale.
However, because of the pressure from residents, the city council agreed unanimously on Sept. 16 to begin traffic-calming measures in the Fairwood neighborhood in January 2004. But seeing results may take some time.
According to Jack Witthaus, transportation and traffic manager with the city, the new effort will be to outreach to the neighborhood. "We want to see neighbors actually at the table, designing solutions," Witthaus said.
The traffic-calming process is a long and structured gathering of data, neighborhood feedback, design, neighborhood-consensus building, polling and city council consideration. While most of the technical information and some neighborhood outreach on traffic calming was done as part of the Fairwood traffic study a year ago, Witthaus said that the city needs to work on formal consensus building and polling of the affected neighborhood.
The Fairwood neighborhood traffic study showed that "non-neighborhood traffic" used Blazingwood Drive at levels greater than considered suitable by the city's traffic-calming criteria. The same study found that this same traffic contributes to higher-than-average collision rates at the intersection of Blazingwood Avenue and Sandia Avenue.
On behalf of Lakewood Village Neighborhood Association, Thom Mayer asked the council to consider moving up the traffic-calming measures to sooner than the beginning of 2004.
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