SCAG Traffic Issues

 Many of the traffic issues in the SCAG area are caused by our suburban neighbors driving to Urban Amenities like Santana Row, Valley Fair, Westfield, the Safeway Shopping Center and the Lyon center. SCAG occupants would walk or cycle if the proposed Urban Corridor on Albany and Kiely is implemented. 
  
 Another issue is suburban neighbors using the Saratoga I-280 ramps to avoid the problems at Lawrence and Winchester.  Some use basically residential streets like Kiely, Moorpark and Albany as short cuts to the Saratoga ramps causing much of the congestion on Kiely and on the very short merge from Kiely to 280S. Another problem is car dealer test drives by mechanics and sales people on these residential streets.
 
 Work commuting from the suburbs is also a major problem  for the whole area.

 Restricting SCAG streets except Saratoga and Stevens Creek Boulevard to local traffic, would encourage cycling and walking, for the SCAG population, local residents, the local workers on Stevens Creek, and nearby businesses.  

School Enrolment

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/24/cupertino-local-school-districts-tackling-declining-enrollment/

“We are looking at a decline in enrollment,” said Wendy Gudalewicz, Cupertino Union superintendent. “What’s happening in this district is we have very large classes; sixth, seventh and eighth [grade] are much larger than kinder [classes] now and future kinder. We’re looking at a bubble of students going out.”

Caused by....rising housing costs that are pricing young couples out of the area.

 It is rising housing costs that are pricing young couples out of the area that is driving "Save our Schools" the 10K+ activist group under many names in Cupertino, West San Jose, and some in Santa Clara whose email list I have been banned from, but I get them anyway by from www dot 'latest SJW meet-up' on lawn signs in my WSJ/Cupertino/Santa Clara stomping grounds. They always start with PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY VALUES.  Whether it is SCAG, Valco, redistricting, MacDonalds at Orchard Farms or even Cell towers on schools.

 We know that even market rate rentals in the CUSD will affect property values since those values are driven by "School Moms" from China and India paying cash for CUSD homes.  School dads providing the cash don't lose, the appreciation for the few years the kids are in school has been about 10% per year since I moved into District 1 in 2001. BMR housing would be even worse which is why they try to use on site BMR housing requirements to kill development. 


http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/08/cupertino-schools-district-to-tackle-declining-enrollment-with-communitys-help/

 This is a serious issue for High Schools as well Lynbrook, the premier school in District 1, is scrambling for students to maintain their excellent acadamic programs.  Some AP classes were cancelled last year due to declining enrollment.  

Merc. 2017/08/06/ Opinion San Jose NeedsTransit on the Creek

The city of San Jose is planning major new development along Stevens Creek Boulevard as part of its Stevens Creek Urban Village Plan, which will come before the City Council on Aug. 8. As elected leaders of the other two cities along the boulevard, we believe the corridor needs significant transit improvements that are lacking in San Jose’s current plan.

Transit follows residential density.  Always has and always will.  Cupertino and Santa Clara have no residential density on Stevens Creek Blvd and have no plans to build any and are blocking the Urban Villages in San Jose.  This call for transit is hollow at best.

We respect San Jose’s interest in economic development and welcome projects that bring new vitality to Stevens Creek. However, we think it would be irresponsible to approve the Stevens Creek Urban Village project without an effective traffic mitigation plan along the Stevens Creek/280 corridor.

 A viable traffic mitigation plan is included in a supplement to the Implementation Section of the Stevens Creek Urban Village Plan which involves signal timing on Stevens Creek to provide a smooth dense traffic flow Eastbound on Stevens Creek from Stern to Saratoga and beyond to I-880.  

 Without the disruption of through right turn traffic from Kiely and Albany trying to get into the left South I-280 turn lanes in less than a quarter mile Saratoga Ave has ample capacity to handle through southbound traffic from Stevens Creek and San Thomas Expressway.  

 Traffic mitigation for the Urban Village will close Urban Village streets including Kiely and Albany to through traffic freeing up the local streets for local vehicles and bikes in shared lanes and pedestrians on improved sidewalks.  Current through traffic from Cupertino on Albany would be handled by the improved signals on Stevens Creek to Saratoga. Current through traffic from Santa Clara now using Kiely will be redirected to Saratoga via Stevens Creek and San Thomas all of which have ample capacity to handle the redirected traffic.   

SCAG Suburban Neighborhood Issues

 The SCAG facade guidelines insure that even the maximum height commercial buildings along Stevens Creek and Saratoga present a varied and architecturally interesting face to the adjacent neighborhoods.  While different from the suburban tract homes the designs are to be attractive to traffic and passersby on the streets as well as providing visual contrast to the low rise look-alike homes and apartment complexes surrounding them.  

 Many suburbanites who are flocking to urban amenities like Santana Row seem to admire the varied urban well designed architecture.  For others who may prefer their familiar suburban context in large part that will be preserved in the surrounding suburbs that are committed to remaining low rise suburbs. They have many square miles of suburbs to frequent if they object to urban amenities. It is important that parochial neighborhood suburban preferences not be given a veto over intelligent urban design. 

A City in the Suburbs?

 

  As suburbs evolve eventually one becomes a city built around a government center, an airport, or other regional amenity. The surrounding suburbs while enjoying the suburban life style use the city amenities intensively creating the bulk of the traffic near the city amenities. Valley Fair/Santana Row is fed by the whole suburban south bay.

Suburbanites will always have a personal vehicle and will drive it from home to somewhere.  Good urban planning means that the somewhere is sufficient to meet the needs of the suburbanite for the day however long the day is.  If it is a workday, lunch, coffee breaks, a stroll in the park, and dinner and entertainment if that is part of the day should be in walking distance from the parking.  If it is a weekend day the destination should have the main event for the day, a park, a gathering place (see placemaking) and again dinner and evening entertainment if desired.  In both cases the parking should be remote with a variety of last mile options to the urban center.

  Nevertheless suburbanites resist the city's efforts to deal with traffic and other city issues with the greater density.  The urban spaces must be carefully planned and essentially forced into the suburban spaces.  It is never easy, and "community involvement" is usually dysfunctional as the only community that will bother to go to the meetings will be those with an agenda to put the city somewhere else.   

 With regard to the developments on Stevens Creek one vocal opponent cites traffic on Stevens Creek that prevents her from getting to her city amenity of a Safeway and other stores in the once suburban shopping center that San Jose wants to turn into an urban village.

  Santa Clara objects to our listing a bike route on Pruneridge that they created by modifying traffic lanes on that once important East West thoroughfare further contributing to congestion on Stevens Creek. But no way, no how can we build the density to pay for our own urban bike corridor.    

 Cupertino wants a hotel to support their suburban businesses as long as it won't cast a shadow in someone's back yard.    They like their city amenities and use them intensively, but don't want to give up even a daylight plane to get them.

A vocal group rants about school impact of development but Lynbrook, Miller, and Dilworth in District 1 are considering redistricting due to declining enrollments.  Lynbrook canceled AP Music Theory this year, a critical pre-requisite for top colleges.

  This suburban thinking is the very antithesis of regional planning. We would be happy to add our neighbors to our planning groups and did so.  Their NO WAY, NO HOW interminable rants disrupted our planning meetings and made reasonable planning impossible.

 The solution is unfortunately to ignore the community input, or rather use the community input to cover substantive conversations on the periphery between city officials and developers pursuant to building the necessary density for the project to work.   

A Self-aware Internet of Things.

A self-aware internet of things. Read all about it at The The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein

Call the internet Mike.

Am not going to argue whether a machine can "really be self-aware....A cat? Almost certainly. A human? I don't know about you, tovarisheh, but I am. Somewhere along evolutionary chain from macromolecule to human brain self-awareness crept in. Psychologists assert it happens automatically whenever a brain acquires certain very high number of associational paths. Can't see it matters whether paths are protein or Platinum.

So didn't hesitate to tell him to get "ill."  Mike had thought up a dandy; his 'illness" was wild oscillations in conditioning Warden's residence.

Conditioning a single residence should not go through a master computer!

Be afraid.