How does the community want its transportation money spent? That
is the question that officials from the Valley Transportation
Authority asked Thursday night when they hosted a public open house
at City Hall to discuss, and get advice, about projects on the
drawing board.
How does the community want its transportation money spent?
That is the question that officials from the Valley Transportation Authority asked Thursday night when they hosted a public open house at City Hall to discuss, and get advice, about projects on the drawing board.
The open house drew five area residents. They were outnumbered by VTA staff members.
The plan is called VTP2030. It is made up of all the projects that VTA would like to work on through the year 2030. But since they are serving the community, VTA officials decided to find out what projects the community wants the most.
The agency intends to improve or expand existing roads, bike trails, walking paths, freeways, expressways and existing services such as light rail through out Santa Clara County. There are also efforts to bring BART into the county.
“We find out (from the open houses) what should be a priority,” said Kat Mereigh, a VTA spokesman. “This is the first time that we are going out to the public for their input. The projects are funded through local sales taxes, so we felt it was important to hear from the public.”
Members of the public went to city council chambers to hear their options and view different stations on potential VTA projects.
Morgan Hill resident Noel Thomas said the presentations were good, but she would wanted increased Caltrain service.
“I would like to see more expansion of Morgan Hill facilities and the return of weekend service,” Thomas said.
The projects have been divided into three tiers based upon how much money is available and how necessary VTA thinks the projects are.
“The board of directors (of VTA) gave certain scores to projects and them handed them over the VTA staff,” said Amin Surani, a senior transportation engineer for VTA. “The staff then ranked projects and included as many as possible, until the money cutoff was hit.”
According to Surani, every three years, VTA will take another look at the projects and will add and subtract as necessary. If a new project is needed, or an existing one is found to not be necessary, they will update their list accordingly.
At Thursday’s event, VTA provided surveys and a dot game for the public to express what they felt was appropriate projects to be spending money on.
The projects with the greatest public support – from previous meetings – according to a dot chart where people placed dots on projects they preferred, were light rail, bike trails and bus service. BART expansion, which has come under fire as the economy has taken a downturn, had the fewest number of votes, but Mereigh still seemed optimistic.
“People have identified others (projects) they would like seen done,” she said. “But there are dots on BART.”
Among other projects in the planning stages are a few new concepts designed to better improve speed of service. One idea presented was to establish signal priority on certain roads for buses. This would allow buses to have priority on a green light ahead of the rest of traffic.
According to Mereigh, the signal priority would cut trips in half, as well as help traffic flow.
“Signal priority is a way for traffic to flow smoother,” Mereigh said, “on top of improving service.”
The meeting even attracted people from outside Santa Clara County who use VTA services.
Jim Franks of Salinas said he was impressed with the surveys. He said he would like to see cost efficient changes along with added safety on bike trails.
“This allows us to say what is high or low priority,” Franks said. “I like the idea of fuel cells, but the shift must be cost effective.”
Morgan Hill was the last in a series of open house forums for the public to receive, and give their opinion on, the projects.
Residents can still learn about the plan and comment online through Wednesday at www.vtp2030.org/ They can fill out a form at the same site to receive the plan by e-mail and call 321-2300 or e-mail (vt*****@*ta.org) their comments.
Details: www.vta.org
