Thursday, July 26, 2007

VTA releases revised COA plan

VTA recently released a revised COA plan after a series of public meetings. The revised plan has addressed most of the concerns raised during the public comment period.

Summary of the changes made in the revised plan:

- Foothill College will be served by the extended route 40 from San Antonio Shopping Center, and line 52 will also serve the college from Downtown Mountain View as it is today. Line 23 will end at De Anza College.

- West Valley College will continue to have service from the north and the east. Line 53, originally proposed to cut service south of De Anza College, will rather be extended along the current line 54 alignment to West Valley College. Line 54 will end at De Anza College as proposed earlier. From the east, line 37, rather than be eliminated, will be extended from Camden & Union to Winchester light rail station, and then to West Valley College via Hacienda, Burrows, Pollard, Quito and Allendale, similar to the alignment suggested by Zakhary Mallett of VTA Riders' Union. Line 27 will end at Good Samaritian Hospital as originally planned.

- The Villages in Evergreen Valley would be served by the realigned line 39. In addition, line 39 will be converted to a community bus route and will also serve the new Evergreen Village Square. Evergreen College will be served by line 31 from Eastridge as originally proposed.

- Line 35 will continue to serve Stanford Shopping Center. VTA originally planned to cut service to the shopping center due to duplication of service by SamTrans, even though SamTrans does not collect sales taxes generated at the shopping center.

- Line 51 will serve De Anza College

- Line 61 and 62 will operate on Hedding between Coleman & 1st St, thereby maintain service to traffic court (which some people who go there should get there on transit and not driving), county jail, and the Hall of Justice.

- Line 63 will continue to serve the Almaden Valley (except the Via Valiente portion) and line 13 will maintain its current routing.

- Line 65 will be converted to community buses but will maintain service to Downtown San Jose. In the south, the line will start on Blossom Hill and Meridian. The original plan would cut service to downtown, thereby eliminating direct service between the San Jose City College and Downtown San Jose.

- Line 76 will be maintained but will operate only on days when Los Gatos High School is in session.

- Line 88 will operate from San Antonio Shopping Center to the VA Hospital via San Antonio, Fabian, Charleston, and Arastradero. School days service will be provided along Louis. The original plan would operate along El Camino and Arastradero. The portion between the VA Hospital and California Avenue Caltrain station would be taken over by a new community bus line 89.

- Lines 66 and 68 will keep their current route.

- Lines 104 and 122 will keep their current service.

Major changes including routing of lines 23, 64, and 81, along with the implementation of new lines 168 and 181 are still in the revised plan. The revised plan also includes the elimination of lines 38, 44, 59, 85, 101, and 305.

The VTA Board is scheduled to approve the COA operating plan at its meeting on August 30.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Even though it may seem like service was restore, more service was cut to balance to remove 42-45 peak vehicles during PM deployment. Several routes will not operate as often (35, 72, 73 and 180) and dozens of routes will start service an hour later or end and hour earlier. Last Sunday service were curtailed on several routes.