May 16, 2008

District 8 Report

38 million dollars secured for Highway 101 improvements

By Vice Mayor Dave Cortese
Special to the Times

With less than six months until the end of my term on the San Jose City Council, and with a large group of candidates seeking the District 8 council seat, many residents have asked me what priorities the next council member should have in order to preserve and enhance the future of our district.

Over the next few weeks I plan to share with you my take on what those priorities should be. The answers are quite simple, actually, because priorities that protect our quality of life are timeless and need to be constantly protected. They are in large part related to the priorities you shared with me eight years ago when I was running for office and which I have continued to promote.

Foremost on people’s minds is traffic relief. While in office the past eight years, I halted all new housing allocations until traffic relief could be achieved—with the support of the city council. The single biggest transportation challenge for our part of San Jose is the daily battle to get on and off Highway 101. The on/off ramps and interchanges at Tully, Capitol and Yerba Buena are outdated, over capacity and extremely dangerous.

First on my to-do list when I came onto the council in 2001 was to figure out where these interchanges stood on the CALTRANS list for improvement. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that they were not even on the list. If they’re not an approved project on any official government list for improvement, then no one in government considers them to be a priority. As a member of the City Council I also served as a board member on the VTA, so I used my position on the VTA board to enlist support from elected officials around the county to move this project to the top of the list. Amazingly, by 2003, the #1 project for the City and the VTA became the Highway 101 improvements at Tully, Capitol and Yerba Buena. It became known as the “101 Corridor Project.”

Within months, design and engineering was completed, awaiting funding. In 2004 I worked with Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren’s office and we were able to secure four million dollars in federal funding for this multimillion-dollar project. Piece by piece, the funds were coming together. In 2006, you, the voters, approved Proposition 1B, a bond which will provide 19 billion dollars for transportation improvements across the state. This seemed a natural funding source for our highway improvements, despite the fact that we would be competing with projects from across the state. In the meantime, we continued our NO GROWTH policies.

I am also a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Com-mission (MTC), which governs transportation issues across the 9 counties of the Bay Area and recommends how money will be spent. I successfully lobbied my colleagues from around the region to support using Proposition 1B and other funds for these highway improvements, and I am pleased to report that the City will soon start by reconstructing the Tully Road interchange and replacing the Tully Road overcrossing as the next steps. In fact, the city has just re-ceived the first checks from the state to begin financing this work. Once complete, the traffic relief along Tully Road onto Highway 101 will be felt throughout Evergreen, Plea-sant Hills and Silver Creek.

I am sharing this with you for a few reasons. First, I want to make sure everyone knows that relief is in sight. I heard your concerns about our district’s traffic challenges and have worked steadily over the years, pursuing every possible opportunity to get this done, all the while slowing new housing growth by refusing any new permit allocations. That kind of managed slowdown in growth needs to continue. Second, we cannot forget the additional improvements for Capitol and Yerba Buena. Just as was done with Phase #1, we need to look for every possible opportunity to fund this second phase. Your next District council member must be committed to making this happen.

In next issue’s column I will share with you more on what I think our next council member’s priorities should be in terms of economic growth and land use. In the meanwhile, please feel free to contact me at dave. cortese@sanjoseca.gov or (408) 535-4908 with any questions or comments. It is always my pleasure to serve you.