The Los Gatos Town Council last week sent safety improvements on Shannon Road back to the drawing board an effort to make the designs mesh with the rural, country feel of the road.
Dozens of residents who live along the stretch of Shannon Road between Los Gatos Boulevard and Cherry Blossom Lane voiced their concerns at an April 18 meeting that the current designs were incompatible with the rural feel of the area.
The town has been working to install sidewalks, bike lanes and street parking to improve the safety of the road, which is a popular route for students at Blossom Hill Elementary, Van Meter Elementary and Fisher Middle schools to bike or walk to school.
“I love this street,” Mayor Maria Ristow said. “It’s beautiful, but I think it will also be beautiful when there’s sidewalks and bike lanes.”
The council’s vote also transferred thousands of dollars in town funds to the project, while requiring that staff revise the design to add more trees and remove parking spaces and host an in-person, on-site meeting with neighborhood residents to explain the changes.
Several residents who spoke at the meeting last week said they felt the design did not reflect the small-town, country feel of the neighborhood and that neighbors did not have enough time to process the latest version of the plan.
“I felt like we took kind of a downtown San Jose design … and we tried to stuff it into what’s a country-feel road,” Councilmember Rob Rennie said of the first design.
The first design included ballards, which were meant to add a buffer to the bike lane. After resident feedback, the ballards have since been removed from the project design.
Eleven trees will be removed from the area during construction, Burnham said. Staff’s current proposal could include up to 14 trees to be planted along the road.
Town staff doesn’t have the time to start the design from scratch, Parks and Public Works Director Nicole Burnham said at the meeting.
Los Gatos secured more than $1.1 million in grant funds, but they must be used or committed to a project by January 2024.
“In all honesty, if we get sent back to the drawing board to redesign this, I don’t know that we can be done by January. That’s just the truth. … I don’t know that we could pull that off,” Burnham said.
Last year, the council accepted a $174,000 grant from Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority for the project, which is estimated to cost $2.4 million. The town also received a $940,000 grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and VTA in 2018.
Source: www.mercurynews.com