Today’s blog entry will focus on the Transportation and Aviation Services City Service Area (“CSA”). This CSA includes the Mineta San Jose International Airport and the Department of Transportation (which, in turn, includes pavement maintenance, landscaping services, traffic maintenance, and parking). However, with respect to the airport, this blog entry does not include the issue of police and fire department staffing at the airport, which was covered in the prior Public Safety CSA blog entry.
Airport
One of the biggest ongoing issues is our ability to compete with San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport. In order to do so, our airport must be cost efficient while providing quality customer service. The greatest challenge in accomplishing this continues to be maintaining and operating the new state-of-the-art facilities with deeply reduced staffing levels. It is not much of a surprise, therefore, that aside from the public safety staffing issues, very few cuts are being proposed with respect to the airport.
The airport is a key economic driver for San Jose and Silicon Valley. This is why it is encouraging that passenger traffic at the airport has been steadily increasing over the last seven months—the longest continuous increase since before 9/11. However, although passenger activity is still projected to increase slightly, overall activity remains about 23% below 2007 levels and 40% lower than passenger levels of 2000-2001. Because of these drops in airport usage, the airport has not been able to increase rates without risking our ability to compete with other local airports.
Pavement Maintenance
As for our roadways, the outlook is somewhat discouraging. You may recall that several months ago San Jose was ranked among the worst big cities in the country in terms of road conditions. The City’s average pavement condition is currently ranked as “fair” and is expected to fall to “poor” by 2020 if there is no significant increase in funding.
At the moment, the City has a $277.0 million backlog in pavement maintenance. This figure does not include the $58.4 million cost of deferred maintenance needs for sidewalks, curbs and gutters, and trees, which are the responsibility of property owners. Over the next five years, funding is expected to be, on average, approximately $86 million below the levels needed to eliminate the backlog and restore our roads and other transportation-related infrastructure to “good” condition. For 2011-2012, there will be funding in the amount of approximately $19 million. This is a decrease in funding from past years when annual funding ranged from $30 to $40 million due to state and federal grants. In addition, four DOT positions in the pavement maintenance department are scheduled for elimination.
There is also good news: last year, federally-funded pavement maintenance projects helped resurface 25.5 miles of some of our City’s worst streets, as well as providing surface seal treatment for 77 miles of residential streets. More re-paving is currently scheduled, including some much-needed work that will be starting soon on portions of Monterey Road.
Traffic
The proposed budget notes that San José’s transportation system has been recognized as one of the safest amongst major cities in the United States. Unfortunately, after 19 years of decreases in the number of traffic-related injuries, there was a 2% increase in 2010. This can be likely attributed to the multi-year reductions in resources designated for traffic safety services and capital improvement projects.
Due to a projected increase in local jobs and population, one of the long-term goals is to implement a transportation system that supports our City’s and region’s expected growth. These goals include major transportation investments such as the BART extension, the California High Speed Rail project, the Diridon Station expansion, light rail and bus enhancements and various freeway and expressway upgrades. In partnership with Caltrans, VTA, and the County of Santa Clara, the City hopes to make improvements to the Highway 880/Stevens Creek interchange, Highway 880 from 237 to the 101, and along the 101 throughout San José.
With respect to neighborhood traffic issues, the City is facing reduced staff resources and funding. As a result, the City will only be able to address mandated and safety improvement work, including reviewing and installing new traffic control signs and roadway markings, updating speed surveys to ensure citing of speeding violations, reviewing stop control and crosswalk requests, and reviewing collision and school traffic circulation. Previous reductions have eliminated services to in regards to neighborhood traffic calming efforts, parking, traffic intrusion concerns, and the review of faded signs and markings.
