By Jon Wiener
The hundreds of thousands of commuters that pass through the Highway 85/Highway 101 interchange each week were scheduled to get another measure of relief this week with the opening of two new off-ramps and a dedicated connector between the two freeways.
Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) officials were planning to open the new ramps Wednesday morning, bringing the massive $125 million project closer to completion.
The newest improvements include off-ramps from Highway 85 northbound and Highway 101 northbound to Shoreline Boulevard and a freeway connector from 85 to 101 northbound. VTA spokesperson Brandi Hall said all that the improvements should eliminate remaining congestion points in the interchange.
When the project began three years ago, Hall said, the transit officials counted 23 “pinch points” and “bottlenecks” along the stretch of Highway 101, which has four different exits in three quarters of a mile.
“There were eight different points of congestion just at Shoreline,” said Hall. “Some of those ramps were expecting cars to get up to 60 miles per hour over 200 feet.”
The money for the project came from a half-cent sales tax passed by voters in 1996. Tax measures for specific programs require a two-thirds majority to pass, but the 1996 measure avoided that requirement by passing one unrestricted tax measure and a second advisory measure with a recommended list of programs.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group — which led the campaign for the 1996 tax and is currently trying to garner support for a second tax to pay for the BART-to-San-Jose project — touted the opening of the ramps as evidence that the measure was a success.
Tuesday, the group announced that it was sponsoring a celebration at Hewlett Packard’s Palo Alto headquarters on March 30, the day before the tax expires. A press release referred to the event with the slogan, “Measures A and B — Promises Kept, We Deliver.”
The only remaining element of the project yet to be completed is the carpool lane connector between the two highways in the freeway median. Hall said she expects that to be completed by late spring.
Paratransit meeting Monday
A year after disabled riders blasted proposed reforms to its paratransit certification process as insufficient, VTA officials are again looking at making it easier for people to gain eligibility.In July 2003, the agency instituted an eight-step certification process, hoping to root out fraud among users of the door-to-door services and save money on its $25 million contract with Outreach Paratransit.
Applicants had to fill out an eight-page application, obtain a physician’s letter and attend an in-person interview. The changes did lead to a decline in enrollment and use of the service, but disabled riders said that had more to do with the difficulty of the process than any reduction in fraud.
The VTA board voted to simplify the process last March, but elected to keep the in-person interview requirement, which didn’t sit well with advocates for the disabled. The agency will discuss a proposal to drop that requirement at a public meeting at Mountain View City Hall at 2 p.m. on Feb. 6.
“The process hadn’t been as an easy as we had hoped, so we’re looking at streamlining it further,” said VTA spokesperson Jayme Kunz.
Nick Burr contributed to this report.
