The Sunnyvale Sun
Letters & Opinions
Speak Out
Removing bus service
will harm students
I am responding to an article in the Sunnyvale Sun about the VTA putting the brakes on the Sunnyvale bus line, in particular the Homestead Road route.
Do you realize the Homestead line is the primary transportation for the students at Homestead High School? (Perhaps this is a concern for Cupertino since the city boundary is Homestead Road. I see crowded buses before and after school and long lines of students awaiting a bus. Shutting down this line will force the kids to walk or worse, start driving cars.
I found it ironic that the principal of Fremont High School lauds the VTA for responding to the student needs of her high school. The VTA seems to be ignoring the needs of Homestead High School!
Please reconsider. Traffic in our area, the area of Homestead High School, is already heavy, especially during school hours. Removing bus transportation will only make it worse and encourage our children to resort to poor commute decisions.
Michael Sands
Kennewick Drive
Residents vow fight
over planned overpass
Whoever suggested the project of bridging two North Bay highways at Moffett Field by a direct connector to Mary Avenue obviously does not live on Mary Avenue! Nor has he studied the ramifications of what converting a main neighborhood arterial into a throughway arterial will do to the neighborhood--including the adjacent streets.
Mary Avenue is a residential street and will not be able to sustain another 10,000 cars on it without losing our on-street parking and rendering egress and ingress via our driveways during commute hours next to impossible.
I understand that this decision was advocated to provide the residents of neighboring towns a speedier connection between their homes and worksites to avoid further congestion on Mathilda Avenue and Highway 85. Midway between these major throughways sat Silent Mary, unrepresented by her constituency to protest the idea.
Nobody asked the residents of Sunnyvale on Mary Avenue how this would affect their neighborhood. Not only will the shortcut have an impact on the residents of Mary Avenue, but also on the adjacent streets of Bernardo and Pastoria as people soon figure out they can avoid the gridlock on Mary by maneuvering to a nearby parallel street.
Just because the traffic is horrendous on highways 85 and 101 and Mathilda Avenue, that's no reason to convert a residential street into a throughway shortcut! Highways run through commercial zones, not in the heart of residential areas.
Trying to resolve the congestion on Highways 101 and 85 and Mathilda by spilling it over onto a residential street will only be creating financial and environmental impacts worse than the current traffic problems.
Let the nearby towns be fiscally responsible for enlarging Grant Road and extending Highway 237 across El Camino. This would eliminate a need for a bridge and dumping another 10,000 cars on Mary Avenue. It would be a more direct route for them to commute from homes to job sites at Moffett Field by continuing through Highway 237 to those towns.
Rerouting excess traffic to Mary Avenue would also lower the property values, contribute more air and noise pollution in the neighborhood, and lead to serious health hazards (asthma and cancer) in children enrolled in local schools.
A group of Mary Avenue concerned residents met on April 3.
Now volunteers have joined to help reach out to adjacent Bernardo and Pastoria streets, where the residents will be contacted to join the Sunnyvale West group to voice their alarm over the Mary Avenue-Moffett Field Bridge project.
The wonder of it all is this: How can the city council act on such an expensive redevelopment project without notifying the citiizens of Mary Avenue who would be directly affected by this preposterous Mary Avenue overpass project?
This is not government by the people--or for the people! It does not include the voice of the governed, and we protest this misuse of power without our knowledge or consent.
J.L. Boehm
Sunnyvale
