There
’s a lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of down-the-road
proposals, a few stop-gap measures, but not a whole lot of action
when it comes to improving the increasing traffic congestion at the
infamous stop-and-go intersection known as the “Don Pacheco Y.”
There’s a lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of down-the-road proposals, a few stop-gap measures, but not a whole lot of action when it comes to improving the increasing traffic congestion at the infamous stop-and-go intersection known as the “Don Pacheco Y.”
While the number of accidents at the intersection where highways 152 and 156 meet at the base of Pacheco Pass doesn’t jump off the page – 23 accidents, including 10 injury incidents and one fatality since 2000 – it’s time legislators and transportation and elected officials stop ping-ponging around before the congestion, which causes safety concerns along the corridor, gets even worse.
According to Caltrans, 30,000 vehicles a day squeeze through the intersection and if you’re trying to make a left turn from westbound Highway 152 onto southbound Highway 156, you can just about forget it.
Neither Caltrans nor the Valley Transportation Authority have any immediate plans to upgrade the intersection. Traffic jams are likely to continue for years – if not decades – along the only major artery that connects the Central Valley to the South Bay and traffic farther north to San Jose and beyond, or south along U.S. 101 or to the coast, and vice versa.
To help alleviate congestion, courteous drivers headed east on Highway 152 are known to slow or stop to allow a driver to make a left turn onto Highway 156. At peak times, the California Highway Patrol stations an officer to direct traffic.
There’s the 3-in-1 Highway Proposal from members of the San Benito County Farm Bureau that proposes changes for highways 152, 156 and 25, and there’s the VTA’s “Southern Gateway Project” currently being reviewed that could eventually provide hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the interchange. But those proposals aren’t likely to be completed for another two decades, if even given the go-ahead.
Caltrans says the number of vehicles passing through doesn’t warrant a signal light. But that would only choke traffic in both directions, as evident during weekends and holidays when eastbound traffic on Highway 152 can back up all the way to U.S. 101 and north to San Martin.
Many of those weekend drivers are the South Valley and many of the weekday drivers are commuting to jobs in this area. They’re often your neighbors and co-workers.
The obvious immediate solution, the necessary solution, is to build a fly-over ramp from westbound Highway 152 to southbound Highway 156. Caltrans and the area CHP unit agree. Caltrans officials have discussed the benefits of a fly-over, but nothing is part of its specific plans for at least the next three years.
It’s time the VTA, the southern Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors representative Don Gage and the San Benito County Board of Supervisors lobby for a fly-over ramp before a hat is hung on a gravestone and not some distant solution.
