Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Why is VTA pit one neighborhood against another?

The highly paid BART delusionals at VTA are asking the community to pick which side of Santa Clara Street the subway would go under at Coyote Creek. To avoid impacting the Santa Clara Street bridge structure, the VTA staff is recommending the tunnel to travel off the street right-of-way and under the neighborhoods.

Those who live north of Santa Clara Street would prefer the tunnel to go south of the street, and those from the south would prefer it to go north. There are legitimate concerns about noise and vibrations generated from the tunnels during and after construction. As we know, for an electric train system, BART is not a quiet, both inside and outside the train.

The city staff perfers the southern alignment, because the northern alignment could impact the redevelopment potential of the former San Jose Medical Center site by limiting the height of future buildings there. However, the redevelopment potential is questionable since no BART station is planned within half a mile from the site and a light rail extension is no longer a viable option on Santa Clara Street.

Just like the Berryessa Flea Market issue, the communities will be the winner if the BART extension is dead and superior options like Caltrain Metro East were pursued instead. Why vote to increase your tax to put noisy tunnels under your house? Vote No on Measure A next year.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Google's transit trip planner is really slick and produces some better alternate routes than MTC's trip planner, but it misses a lot of bus stops (most importantly for me, the one by my apartment), which leads to it directing you to do some silly things (such as suggesting an unnecessary 1 mile walk for my trip).