Dear Santa Clarans,
The 49ers Stadium's Transportation Management and Operations Plan, or TMOP comes before Council this Tuesday evening, November 19th. These 150 pages will directly impact Santa Clarans and Sunnyvale residents living north or U.S. 101. Santa Clara Plays Fair encourages all Santa Clarans, but in particular those of us in Zip Code 95054, to examine this plan carefully.
This will give you a fair idea of the traffic jams that you can expect during events at the 49ers' stadium.
- First, see the report's page 5 and note that the total number of vehicle trips on an NFL game day is recycled from the 2009 Environmental Impact Report. At that time, the San Francisco 49ers and their stadium boosters needed desperately to low-ball the count of vehicle trips so that any traffic plan here would "show well" compared to Candlestick Park.
If you believe that figure - 18,818 vehicle trips - then maybe the 21,000 offsite parking spaces (the parking spaces that the 49ers now swear they have) will be enough to accommodate those vehicles. If the intersections are cleared a little sooner, fine - but none of this is going to reduce those game-day traffic jams in any way.
- Of greater interest to Santa Clara residents, particularly on our north side, will be 'Residential Intrusion Control.' See page 6 of the report, Section 2.2.2, for a list of streets with "Event-related vehicle access" restrictions. At the very least, if you are a resident of the Agnews area on Santa Clara's north side, your own street should be on this list.
- But what the City - and the Stadium Authority - are really willing to do to prevent residential parking from being swamped with game-day parking has been dialed back quite a bit since 2009. See in Section 5.1.1 on report page 29 the four numbered bullets at the bottom of the page: Basically, you will get parking enforcement on your street not because it's the right thing to do, but only if you speak up about abuses by 49ers' fans. Those game-goers will be trying to evade the parking fees in the much-vaunted "Offsite Parking District."
Frankly, if we're dealing with game-goers who've spent $2,000 to $20,000 on stadium PSLs, they should have no quarrel with paying $40 to stow the Escalade while they're at the game. If they do have a problem with that and if they insist on jam-packing your own street so that you can't park in front of your own home, that will speak volumes about the regard that the 49ers' fan community truly has for the team's new home.
Can you attend the City Council Meeting this Tuesday evening? If you are a resident concerned about the game-day congestion generated by the 49ers' stadium, you can express those concerns when the TMOP is taken up.
Please come to Council Chambers, 1500 Warburton Drive, at 7:00 pm on Tuesday evening. If you cannot attend, please email your written comments directly to the Mayor and the City Council .
Tomorrow: A little index for the TMOP.
Thanks for all of your support,
William F. "Bill" Bailey, Treasurer,
http://www.santaclaraplaysfair.org/
-=0=-
No comments:
Post a Comment