Town gets set for the biggest roads project in its history

Those phantom bike lanes will continue to be hidden

The price tag is $1.9 million

By Jeff Kearns

The town's Public Works Department is gearing up for a major resurfacing effort on arterial streets this summer, as part of a $1.9 million roads project approved last year that will be the biggest in the town's history.

Crews will be putting down about 33,000 tons of new asphalt on 1.5 million square feet of pavement starting this week and continuing through mid-August.

"It's the biggest single street project we've ever done," says Public Works director Scott Baker.

Delays and detours will be unavoidable, according to Baker, but none of the major roads will need to be closed because most of the roads where work will occur have multiple lanes. Most of the major paving jobs should be wrapped up by Aug. 1, and much of the work will take place at night or between the morning and afternoon rush hours. Some of the biggest jobs include:

* Winchester Boulevard from Blossom Hill Road to the Campbell city limits;

* Blossom Hill Road from Winchester Boulevard to Los Gatos Boulevard;

* Knowles Drive from Pollard Avenue to Winchester Boulevard;

* Lark Avenue from Winchester Boulevard to Highway 17;* The intersection of Los Gatos Boulevard and Lark Avenue.

Signs will go up around town near locations where work is scheduled, and residents and businesses along those streets will get door hangers with specific information.

Most of the money for the job--more than $611,000--comes from county Measure B funds handed out by the Board of Supervisors earlier this year. Much of the rest comes from the town's recent budget surplus.

Town officials decided to put most of their surplus into the 1998-99 Capital Improvement Program budget last year in the form of one-time capital expenses, such as roads.

Some projects, such as Knowles Drive and Broadway Extension, will be funded in part by property owners who have paid into assessment districts.

The Public Works department is using a new computer model to figure out what resurfacing or resealing jobs would be the most effective, based on observation of the conditions of the streets.

Some roads, like Knowles Drive, haven't seen major work since the 1970s, and have fallen into such poor condition that they must be totally dug up and rebuilt.

A road that's in decent shape and in danger of becoming worse--slipping, say, from level B to level C--would be a much better investment of town dollars because preventive maintenance is many times cheaper than repairing actual damage. Baker likens it to painting a house: "You can put a coat of paint on and protect the wood, or you can let the wood rot and replace the wood."

Next year's budget--and another $611,000 from Measure B--will bring another major resurfacing project that will probably be as big in scope as this year's, except that next year's will focus almost entirely on residential streets.

"We've had a real conscious effort to try to put more money into our streets," Baker said. "We've been doing a lot of preventative and ongoing maintenance, so it should improve everyone's ride."

Los Gatos Boulevard north of Blossom Hill Road is also set for a resurfacing and a restriping. This is the project that was so heavily debated in late 1997, when bike advocates and car dealers each battled for and against bike lanes on the boulevard.

The bike advocates lost, and the council decided in December 1997 not to stripe actual bike lanes on the boulevard, but rather to narrow the three lanes of traffic from 12 to 11 feet, which would leave an extra space on the side of the road for bicyclists. Los Gatos Boulevard already has a bike lane south of Blossom Hill Road.

Until now, that project has been held up waiting for the boulevard to be resurfaced so the lanes could be restriped at the same time.

Councilmembers approved the $31,800 expenditure to resurface June 7 of this year. Work is scheduled to begin July 19 and wrap up sometime in August.

As a part of the agreement reached in December, 1997, an engineering consultant has been hired to evaluate how safe and effective the narrower lanes are for bicyclists on the boulevard.

Councilmembers said they would review the narrower lanes one year after they are completed, and possibly consider striping actual bike lanes.

For information on resurfacing projects, call Parks and Public Works, 399-5770.

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