[4Crawler]

The San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail will be temporarily detoured between Agnew Road and Tasman Drive for approximately 1 year starting April 15 and ending when the Stadium is open.

The detour is needed to ensure the safety of bicyclists, pedestrians, and construction workers. The construction activity in and around this portion of the San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail will include re-grading the Great America Theme Park Main Parking Lot, work related to Parking Lot lights and utilities, abutments and support for the 3 new bridges, and the rerouting of the Creek Trail around the new bridges.

Bicyclists will be rerouted via Agnew Road, Lakeshore Drive, Gianera Street, the VTA Great America Train Station Parking Lot, Stars & Stripes Drive, and service road/trail along the rear of the Tasman Parking Garage, and then back to the San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail.

Pedestrians will be rerouted via Agnew Road, Mission College Blvd, Great America Parkway past the Santa Clara Convention Center, and then back to the San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail.

Map of detour(s) below:
- City of Santa Clara : News : San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail Temporary Detour

 

[ukbloke]

Oh, for about 1 year! Wow, that's going to suck for a lot of trail users.

But thanks for posting.

 

[4Crawler]

Oh, for about 1 year! Wow, that's going to suck for a lot of trail users.

But thanks for posting.

Yes, I was shocked by the 1 year estimated closure!

One might ask if this were say Great America Pkwy. that was to be closed for construction, I doubt it would be closed for a year. They would probably do like they do on the Bay Bridge and cram all the work into a long weekend and be done with it.

But "it is just a bike lane", so take all the time you want.

Now, I wonder if the bike path rules will apply to the temporary route. For example I skate on that trail several times a week, legally. But according to city regulations, skating on city streets is not permitted. So am I going to be breaking the law if I skate the officially designated temporary route?

 

[4Crawler]

Rode back on the bike detour route yesterday, you can cross at the bridge by the golf driving range, then follow the bike/train signs to wind through the tennis courts and then swing around and under Tasman by the train station. Then through the construction parking lot and at the back hop on a short paved bike path and that dumps you onto Gianera Street then onto Lakeshore Drive. At least not terribly busy streets, although getting from Agnews onto the south bound STAC trail is sketchy, as there is no crossing light button in the center divider. So you either hang a left at the divider and wait for a light or break in traffic, or you have to swing right and hit the cross button. Not sure what the official way to make that turn is, but at rush hour, that could be a problem.

Also, this week is apparently the spring cleaning pickup week in that neighborhood, so the sidewalks and streets are packed with junk and trucks stopping to sort through that. So probably best to avoid the area until next weekend, give them time to clean up the streets and probably avoid riding close to the curbs for a while in case there is still debris there.

For folks that commute via the bike trail, probably need to allow 5 extra minutes for your ride time with that route. It is nowhere near as direct and there are stop signs and intersections to deal with compared to the straight through trail.

 

[districtSrider]

I can't believe this will be closed for a whole year. The signs posted on the trail say nothing about this.

The San Tomas trail was perfect for connecting to the light rail station from the southern part of Santa Clara without having to worry about riding on dangerous roads or through random neighborhoods. I'm hoping they'll make up for this by finishing the trail south of Monroe St, but we'll see.

 

[4Crawler]

I can't believe this will be closed for a whole year. The signs posted on the trail say nothing about this.

The San Tomas trail was perfect for connecting to the light rail station from the southern part of Santa Clara without having to worry about riding on dangerous roads or through random neighborhoods. I'm hoping they'll make up for this by finishing the trail south of Monroe St, but we'll see.

Looks like they are making progress on the new section of trail between Monroe and El Camino. They were pouring concrete for the first stretch of the K-wall along the edge of the pavement last week and have form work up for the next stretch. Checked behind the new wall and they have the new trail area back filled and roughly graded, so I guess all the underground work is done. I think they are planning to build a taller sound wall between the bike path and the neighboring houses, but don't see any signs of that work beginning.

I expect the original 5/13 re-opening date is not going to happen, especially since they were a few months late on getting started.

 

[patrickkonsor]

When I biked past today it looked like they had removed the sign saying when it would open again, so I'm guessing it will be after 5/13.

 

[4Crawler]

I noticed that they are getting ready to pour concrete for the big wall posts for the sound wall that will sit between the bike path and the houses. I thought I read some place that there was going to be a sound wall along the residential area, so I guess they'll have to finish that up before they can get going on paving the bike path.

Looks like they planted a small forest of redwood trees along the ball field in lieu of a sound wall. I guess that is to replace the big trees they took out a few years ago.

Also see they have done a lot of excavation where the existing trail ends at Cabrillo. Still waiting to see what they are going to do with that intersection.

 

[jmpsmash]

they put up the inner wall between the bike path and the houses behind. it went up within a couple of days. what concerns me is that the wall has pillars (molded) sticking out every 10 meters or so, and the textures is very rough. being so narrow as it is one need to be extra careful going the southerly direction. any misjudgement on the line will mean crashing into these concrete pillars.

not sure what they are thinking.

 

[4Crawler]

Yes, I saw those pillars laying on the ground first of least week. They seem to be made of cast concrete, open on the back side. I'll have to take a look next time I walk by the trail now that they are up. That fake adobe block texture on them was pretty rough, they would leave quite a mark if you were to hit one at speed. Seems the designers are not thinking of higher than walking speed when they put something like that in.

Did take a peek last night. That is a pretty narrow section of trail between the sound wall and traffic barrier. seems they could have used a less obtrusive column design, those things eat up almost a foot of that width. I didn't check all the street endings, but it looks like there will be no entrances to the path from those two street ends. I think I heard there will be access at Laine Ave. by the ball fields.

 

[4Crawler]

Saw an updated "opening date" sign on the southerly end of the trail at Monroe last night. Listed "7/13" as the opening date, with the "7" written over an area that had been blanked out. So assume that means some time in July 2013.

Saw the first section of the finished sound wall tonight, wow that thing is tall, probably around 10 feet! Looks like there are some entrances to the bike path at Laine. Looks like the grading of the trail is pretty much done, ready for some oil and asphalt. I see they are putting up a black fence along the ball field and trail. Looks like a lot of work going on at Cabrillo with new pole bases and what not.

6/24: Saw they got the pavement laid down along the walled section today. Still looks like a lot of work going on at the Cabrillo intersection and some landscaping still on-going. Appears the landscaping will be similar to the section of trail just north of Cabrillo with a black chain link fence between the trail and the ball fields. Also noticed the sound wall seems to be finished up to near El Camino.

 

[4Crawler]

Attended a meeting of the Santa Clara Bicycle Access Committee this afternoon, mainly to get my pitch across for better safety at the Monroe St. crosswalk on the creek trail. Did get some positive questions and comments on that topic, so we will see. I was nearly hit again on Wednesday evening by a car nearly running that crosswalk, so that prompted me to look up the BAC schedule and they had a meeting scheduled the very next day.

But the big agenda item was issue of what to do with the creek trail next to the new stadium on game days. Apparently all along, the stadium proponents chanted the refrain that nothing will happen with the trail and heck, you can even ride you bike on it right to the game. There apparently was some early thought given to making stadium access via raised and covered bridges to separate trail traffic from stadium traffic, but repeating the refrain above, no need to worry about that, the trail will be fine. Besides, that would cost the stadium project a bunch of money and since it wasn't going to be a problem, why spend the money?

Fast forward to today, and with the post Boston bombing, there will be row after row of metal detectors along the main Great America parking lot (like the whole length of that huge parking lot according to the photo they showed) to screen all the game attendees prior to entering the "sterile (i.e. secure) zone" of the stadium.

Oops, the bike trail passes right through the middle of the sterile zone. So it looks like either the trail will be closed basically all day long on big event days; 4-8 hours before the game until 4-8 hours after the game. Or trail users may be allowed to pass (on foot only), but only after going through security screening. Sounds fine in theory, but realize you'll be trying to cross a stream of 70,000 tail gating fans pushing and shoving to get into the stadium while pushing your bike along in clip-less shoes for about a mile!

But the main option seems to be to detour trail traffic east on Agnews, north on Lafayette then west on Gold St. connector to reconnect with the north end of the trail. Actually, that would be my preferred route if I accidentally found myself on the trail on a game day. Get me the heck out of here as fast as possible. My main plan will be to head due south on home game days, not getting anywhere near that mob scene.

The final decision won't be made for some time now. And apparently there is a grant application in the process for the city to get funding to modify the creek trail along the stadium area to run it under the existing and new foot bridges. Now the question remains as to why do we, the tax payers, have to foot the bill to fix the trail that we, the tax payers, paid to build because the stadium folks did not want to pay to put their foot bridges over the trail, that was already there, in the first place. Suffice it to say, the two guys from the stadium project got an earful and high tailed it out of the meeting once their presentation was over. And the high muckety-muck from the stadium project that was supposed to be there as well was suddenly called out of town the day of the BAC meeting that is scheduled 2 months ahead of time?

Still makes you think how cyclists rank in the grand scheme of things. If the stadium guys came along and said OK, we are going to need to close down a mile of Hwy. 101 for a year while we build the stadium, oh and we'll be closing it down about 15 days a year during events; heads would be rolling. But, it is just a bike path, nobody will care.

One other item, the city has just released their hard copy bike map and they are close to releasing the on--line version. Will be both web and mobile accessible. Should be out in a month or two.

 

[ukbloke]

Thanks for attending and writing this up!

 

[4Crawler]

Looks like the trail segment from Monroe to Cabrillo might be partially open. Came by last night and they have the south side bike lane on Cabrillo blocked off and the north side is now open. The big Trail Closed sign is still up at Monroe but the gate was open. Seems they have the bike lane and sidewalk work done, but still have the traffic lane work to do. Looks like they added a larger concrete area at the end of the bike path, maybe to serve as a holding area prior to crossing the street, so maybe there will be a dedicated crosswalk light to stop traffic coming off of San Tomas.

Also took a look down the new section of trail (the chain link fence was partly down). Looks like there is about a foot wide landscape section along the big sound wall. So at least that keeps riders a bit away from those protruding columns and the paved part of the path is actually quite wide, I think it is wider than the part just north of Cabrillo. Seems like they are adding some chain link fencing atop the shorter wall along the roadway and still working on the south side of the Cabrillo intersection.

Walked up the paved section of the new trail this evening. Noticed it just ends short of El Camino, not sure what the plan is for that end. Looks like the two options are to just dump the trail traffic onto the existing bike lane along San Tomas or they'll have to cut out the trees along the Holiday Inn Express parking lot wall and then extend the trail up along that strip of land. But no sign of any kind of work being done at that end, so it will be a trail to nowhere for a while. And I was mistaken and there seems to be no access from Laine onto the trail. Looked like there was going to be access there, but it seems the chain link fence will run up to the concrete sound wall and no break in the landscaping between the trail and the fence for anyway. So essentially the trail segment will be just like the expressway, access only from Cabrillo and El Camino.

7/23/13: Looks like the fencing along the expressway barrier is done and the gaps in the inside fence are now gone. Seems work is progressing at Cabrillo. Looks like they are getting rid of the islands and having the crosswalk set back off the expressway a ways. New traffic lights are going up. One thing I have notices is that the new sidewalk west along Cabrillo is kind of narrow and with landscaping on both sides, it will be hard for bikes and any other traffic to pass that section at the same time. Not sure if bikes headed west are supposed to enter at the crosswalk and make a sharp right turn into traffic or stay on the sidewalk where there is no curb cut until the driveway at the church parking lot.

8/2/13: Seems they finished some of the concrete for the trail south of the Cabrillo intersection. There is still a section of trail yet to be paved between there and the end of the previous paved part. Heard that the contractor (Robert A. Bothman Construction) was having a big party at their San Jose HQ last Friday, not sure if that was related to the trail construction or not.

 

[4Crawler]

I saw today that the contractor was working near the El Camno end of the trail, with some grading and marking of the last trail section along the side of the expressway. Looks like the trail will be right along the edge of the roadway there with no wall. Not sure if the street light poles, that are pretty much in the middle of the northbound lane of the trail, will be moved or not. Also looks like they are setting forms for the last section of trail near Cabrillo and perhaps finally installing the trail lighting along the part of the trail behind the traffic barrier.

Looks like the crews finished installing the trail lighting. Now there is a gate up where the sound wall starts blocking access to the southern end of the trail, so assume that means work is going on at the El Camino end.

10/8/13: Saw that they filled in the one unpaved gap south of Cabrillo with nice new concrete, so the trail is all complete south to the El Camino end. Saw that they have new pavement down up from the end of the sound wall south to El Camino. Not sure what they plan to do at the actual intersection as far as traffic control goes. Also appears they are setting forms for the final concrete work at the Cabrillo intersection.

 

[4Crawler]

Seems like the pavement extends through to El Camino. Walked the full length of the trail from El Camino to Cabrillo tonight.

Doesn't look like they are planning to do much at the El Camino intersection. The new pavement just dumps out onto the existing crosswalk. The last few hundred feet of trail has no barrier between it and the turn lane, so I guess that gives driver's a chance to see trail users before the crosswalk. At least that is a bit better than crossing over to that traffic island than from the sidewalk as that is a blind corner when you step off the sidewalk.

Looks like they were working on the new stop lights at Cabrillo/San Tomas tonight, the older traffic lights are gone. There seems to be some sidewalk work and then cubs/gutters/pavement patching to finish up.

Looks like the crew worked over the weekend and on Columbus Day to wrap up most of the paving work around the new intersection. It might be getting close to opening that new trail segment. I think the El Camino intersection is a bit sketchy if the trail starts getting a lot of heavy bike commute traffic.

Took a look at the trail segment tonight and it seem that they only have some striping to finish up and installation of bollards at either end and the trail should be ready to open.

 

[ukbloke]

Looks like they are all done, and just need to open it. I can't believe how long this 1/2 mile of trail is taking. How many more years is it going to take for the southern end of this trail to actually connect to something useful?

 

[4Crawler]

Looks like they are all done, and just need to open it. I can't believe how long this 1/2 mile of trail is taking. How many more years is it going to take for the southern end of this trail to actually connect to something useful?

Yes, it seems to be stuck at 99.9% done. All that I can see lacking is they need to add the lane striping and put some bollards in at either end to keep cars out and it should be ready to go. It looks like the contractor is starting to clean up all the areas they used for storage during the work, so they must be getting ready to pull up stakes.

10/21: Can't figure out what is up now. Looks like they are re-doing some of the plantings along the double walled section. But they have a gate set up with a "Hardhat Area" sign on it, so maybe some other heavy work is transpiring.

10/29: Can't see that any work has been done the last week, still gates at both ends of the trail segment. Gate at the El Camino end has a "Trail Closed xxxx To xxxx" sign, but all the dates are blacked out. Looks like the contractor has removed just about all their equipment from their staging area.

11/4: Looks like nothing is going on with the trail. Only change in the last week was the fence/gates at either end are a little more securely placed, but it is still possible to squeeze through for a peek. Also the gate in the middle is now off to the side but the gap in the fence at the end of the sound wall is now closed up. Did see some new marking paint up near El Camino so maybe there is some additional work that needs to happen there?

11/13: Saw some new marking paint for future striping along some of the e on-street bike lanes, so maybe they are still prepping to get all the striping done in one shot when they finally bring in the equipment to do that. Don't see anyone actually working on the closed section of trail, though.

 

[4Crawler]

I went by that new section of trail the other day and it seems they have applied a top coat or sealer to the double walled section. They had done some pavement patching earlier in the summer (must have had to do some digging). I see some of the trees along the wall by the motel are tagged for removal, so I suspect they have more work to do at the El Camino end of the trail. I read a blog post someplace that there may be some additional work to do at that southern end. I see some more survey type paint marks on that end of the trail. I suspect that work is what is holding up opening of that segment of the trail.

The staging area where the contractor had stored all their material and equipment is basically cleaned out, just a couple of trailer road signs and a pickup sitting there.

 

[ziscwg]

Yes, it seems to be stuck at 99.9% done. All that I can see lacking is they need to add the lane striping and put some bollards in at either end to keep cars out and it should be ready to go. It looks like the contractor is starting to clean up all the areas they used for storage during the work, so they must be getting ready to pull up stakes.

10/21: Can't figure out what is up now. Looks like they are re-doing some of the plantings along the double walled section. But they have a gate set up with a "Hardhat Area" sign on it, so maybe some other heavy work is transpiring.

10/29: Can't see that any work has been done the last week, still gates at both ends of the trail segment. Gate at the El Camino end has a "Trail Closed xxxx To xxxx" sign, but all the dates are blacked out. Looks like the contractor has removed just about all their equipment from their staging area.

11/4: Looks like nothing is going on with the trail. Only change in the last week was the fence/gates at either end are a little more securely placed, but it is still possible to squeeze through for a peek. Also the gate in the middle is now off to the side but the gap in the fence at the end of the sound wall is now closed up. Did see some new marking paint up near El Camino so maybe there is some additional work that needs to happen there?

11/13: Saw some new marking paint for future striping along some of the e on-street bike lanes, so maybe they are still prepping to get all the striping done in one shot when they finally bring in the equipment to do that. Don't see anyone actually working on the closed section of trail, though.

Wouldn't that whole section been a hell of a lot easier if they took part of the median out and moved the lanes over 4 feet????