CCMIN062000 - Laserfiche WebLink

Mr. Fay responded that the project is Phase I of three phases. It is the auxiliary lane, which is the lane that comes on with the on-ramp and then disappears at the next off ramp. There is an auxiliary lane in Fremont, cxith~g at Mission Boulevard south and the crossover to 1-880~ What they hope to do with that particular project is to pull people out of the general lanes and into the auxiliary lane as they queue up to get off of the freeway. This is the primary bottleneck in the corridor that starts the snowballing efl~ct and creates the congestion. It will not relieve all of the congestion, because if it would, it would be the only thing they would be doing. Subsequently, the next phase of the project will be an interim carpool lane, which CalTrans is now designing. This will be environmentally cleared and they hope to have it out to construction by next year. The last part of the project would be to bring it up to full standard with soundwalls and some other things that will go in the corridor. Ms. Ayala asked how far out did the Transportation Department look for solving the existing problems with the numbers that ABAG is projecting for the cities'? Mr. Fay asked if she was asking how long will this relief last? That is hard to forecast. Ills guess is 5 10 years, although he has not looked at this spealfically, but that is one of the reasons they put in place the earpool lane, feeling that the goal would be to get more people through the corridor. They are focusing on the movement of people, not automobiles. If they can get people to double up or triple up in their cars, they can gct more people over the Sunol Grade. They can't get more cars over it. Potentially the express lanes might even add more capacity lbr people movement by making more cfficicnt use of the facility. Ms. Ayala asked what agency is going to look beyond 5 10 years? Mr. Fay said that his agency will be looking at that. He had to confess that they have been somewhat shortsighted for the following reasons. When he looks at the available revenue stream and looks at what problems they have, they can see it on the ground today as a problem. This is what they can solve in the next 20 years with the available revenue stream. That is again why it is important that they have an extension of the ½ cent sales tax in Alameda County. It extends the amount of money and their ability to deal with the problems in a more pro-active way. Ms. Ayala agreed and said that she is trying to get a handle on how they are not going to be here again. She asked for him to give her some comfort level. Mr. Fay said that he could not. This is an urban area, it is a growing urban area with a robust economy and congestion will re-appeas somewhere. Congestion may not be on the Sunol Grade, it may be someplace else. What we will probably see l:airly soon in the newspapers is that while things have not gotten bctter on the Sunol Grade, it is now number two on the congestion list in 1999 because the 1-80 through ConIra Costs and Alameda Counties is vastly worse. One of the things that they suspect is because things were so bad on the Sunol Grade, people have actually diverted to 1-880. Southbom~d 1- 880 in the morning has gown dramatically. 1-880 South is now number three in the Pleasanton City Council 11 06/20/00 Minutes