State Routes Relinquished to San Jose

This article by Ray Salvano appeared in the January 2012 issue of DOT Way, the City of San Jose's DOT newsletter. Ray is an employee within the Department of Transportation (portions in bold are my own).

On December 28, 2011, after almost six years of negotiations with Caltrans, the City became the official owner of State Routes 82 and 130. Serving primarily as urban arterials within the City of San Jose, these state routes are commonly known as the Alameda and Monterrey Road (SR 82) and Alum Rock Avenue (SR 140).

Over the decades of their existence and with the growth and urbanization of the City, SR 82 and SR 130 have evolved to serve more as local arterial streets than part of the state highway system. However, as these roadways were under the jurisdiction of Caltrans, any changes to the roadway, such as a new traffic signal or crosswalk, resulting from a development project or local or community based improvement would require Caltran's involvement at all levels, e.g., administration, planning, construction and operations. The result of Caltrans' involvement in these types of local projects was typically an increase in the cost and time to deliver the project.

Perhaps more importantly from the City's perspective, a projects development along state routes are required to meet Caltran's rigid, auto-oriented design and operational standards.

These standards are often in conflict with the City's development and multi-modal objectives, as well as community interests. In the case of SR 82 and SR 130, the City's goals for these streets, as recently adopted in the Envision 2040 General Plan Update, are to improve the pedestrian environment, implement multi-modal projects and reconsider the amount of right-of-way previously development to auto-centric standards.

With the relinquishment of the State routes, the City has the opportunity to better manage, integrate and streamline the land use, right-of-way, and decision-making  process along these corridors without having to go through Caltran's project development processes. Currently, there are a number of projects of local and regional significance being development along these corridor that will benefit from the City's ownership of these corridors. A few examples of these projects include: VTA's Bus Rapid Transit projects along Alum Rock and The Alameda, our own "The Alameda - The Beautiful Way' street scape projects, planning activities in the Diridon Station area.

With the relinquishment of the State Routes, approximately 12 centerline miles will be added to the City's street inventory. To offset the generally poor conditions of the facilities, Caltrans has agreed to support the City's request for $12.4 million in federal grant funds toward the rehabilitation of the roadway facilities. These funds, when combined with the local projects previously mentioned, are intended to improve the roadways and related facilities to a good state of repair and not require any substantial invest of maintenance funds for several years.

A special thanks goes to Betsy Shotwell, Roxanne Miller and Kelly Doyle for their support and guidance through the State's legislative processes, the IM Division for helping develop the condition assessment report, Johnny Phan of the Attorney's Office for his assistance in negotiating the relinquishment agreement and Zahir Gulzadah for manging the relinquishment process on the City side.