Photograph courtesy of Valley Transportation Authority
Proposed Station: A light-rail bridge and station may be built to cross Hamilton Avenue near Highway 17 as depicted in this illustration.
New bridge might be constructed crossing Hamilton
Light rail may run overhead rather than at street level
By Kate Carter and Erin Mayes
Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), San Jose and Campbell officials last month couldn't convince West San Jose and Campbell residents that a proposed light-rail station on a bridge near their homes is a good idea.
The station is part of the VTA's Vasona Light Rail project, to be completed in late 2004, that would extend the mass transit system from downtown San Jose along Willow Glen's northern border and through downtown Campbell, and later would run to Los Gatos. Residents near the planned station, proposed to cross Hamilton Avenue near Highway 17, met with project officials on July 24, 26 and 31 to hear, and some to challenge, the overcrossing as the second-best solution to a situation no one seems to like.
"We had been looking for an at-grade crossing," said Project Manager Mark Robinson of the VTA's initial plan to put the station and rail line at ground level. "All light rail crossings must be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Normally, it's not a difficult process. In certain rare instances, they protest the application. Such is the case here."
The CPUC objected to the ground-level crossing last January, said VTA Senior Planner Steve Fisher, because it was concerned the station and crossing would increase traffic congestion on an already-busy Hamilton Avenue. The VTA requested a hearing before a judge regarding the situation not long after, he said, but California's energy crisis has demanded much of the CPUC's attention and slowed the process. A judge was recently assigned to the case, but there is no certainty the application will be heard soon, he said.
Rather than wait for a decision that VTA officials expect to be against their at-grade request anyway, the VTA's board of directors voted in June to construct a bridge if the utilities commission does not schedule a hearing before November 30.
Jenna Skinner sat in the front row at the July 24 meeting in the Community Room at the Campbell Library and voiced many of her concerns to VTA staff members. Residents who live on her street, Camino Cerrado, and some of the surrounding streets will be able to see the bridge if it is built.
A mother of two, Skinner said she is concerned about raising her family in an area where light rail cars may be passing by overhead.
"I live on a beautiful street," the former PTA president said. "[If the agency builds a bridge] I'll leave. I can't live with that. I'm heartbroken. I love my home."
In an effort to inform her neighbors about the agency's upcoming meetings, Skinner created a graphic depicting a bridge crossing over Camino Cerrado and made copies of VTA board members' phone numbers. She went through her neighborhood, up and down Via Cancion and Rojo Place, passing out her fliers.
"People had no idea what was going on," Skinner said. "They were shocked."
Neighbors at the meetings said they were worried about how the aerial station would appear near their homes, about the noise and graffiti it would generate and about losing their privacy and their property values.
VTA officials tried to ease their concerns by telling them the station would be landscaped and include artwork designed to discourage tagging. The VTA would be responsible for removing graffiti within 48 hours.
The bridge would also have an approximately three-and-a-half-foot-high noise barrier which would maintain environmentally acceptable noise levels of below 61 decibels, according to a VTA report. It would also have a six-to-seven-foot-high visual screen along the bridge so riders won't be able to look into homes or backyards.
Robinson said the VTA wasn't able to determine the effect an overcrossing would have on property values because there are no similar situations in the nearby area to use for comparison.
"The information is not available," he said.
But the approximately 100 people at the July 31 meeting at the Quail Hollow Mobile Home Park near Bascom Avenue and Southwest Expressway were shown some digitally enhanced photos that depict how the station would appear behind neighborhoods.
"Would you want to buy that house and live there?" a neighbor asked the officials. Others suggested that the VTA consider the long-term costs of an overcrossing, including landscaping and maintenance and reduced property taxes.
San Jose District 6 City Councilman Ken Yeager, an alternate member of the VTA board, was the lone dissenter in the June vote, and instead supports trying to build the line underneath Hamilton Avenue.
"I have grave concerns about this aerial structure that would be going up behind your neighborhoods," Yeager told the group.
Campbell City Councilwoman Jane Kennedy, who is also a member of the VTA board, said she supports the overcrossing with a station as the best second option because it is the most efficient way to build the station there.
The VTA supports the above-grade bridge because it's less expensive than a subway station, could also be safer and would take less time to build, VTA Spokesman John Pilger said. The latest plan for the overcrossing with a station would cost $11.2 million more than a street-level crossing and take an extra five months to build, bringing the line's projected completion date to April 2005. An undercrossing with a station would cost an estimated $19.4 million more and take 18 more months to build, he said.
Neighbors to the future station, though, challenged the board's preference for the overcrossing. They said the structure would reduce their property values and quality of life. Instead, they said, they want an undercrossing without a station because there is a station already planned for a site only two blocks away. Fisher said the undercrossing without a station would cost $15.7 million more than at ground level and take 10 months longer to build, and added that it still wouldn't have a station. The next nearest stations are along Southwest Expressway between Bascom Avenue and Stokes Street to the north and in downtown Campbell to the south.
"It's not like it's impossible to walk, but it's a hoof," Fisher said of walking from the further stations to Hamilton. "[The Hamilton station] is a destination station for the developing offices on the south side of Hamilton, and it could alleviate some Hamilton traffic."
Kennedy said the station on Hamilton Avenue has been in the plan for years and will serve people going to the Pruneyard shopping center and other commercial buildings, including a new hotel and office complex on the north side of Hamilton Avenue near Highway 17. She said the station would attract more businesses to the area.
"The voters wanted this Hamilton station," she said, referring to the 1996 approval of the transportation Measure B.
Neighbor Donna Marshall said she is looking forward to having light rail nearby.
"I think that living close to the light rail station might be an asset, because you can zip right downtown," she said.
But others said they are being asked to pay too high a price for the convenience of others.
"I'm totally for mass transit," neighbor Margie Pritchett said. "But there's an alternative, and they're not even looking at it."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
