Ord 1434 - URGENCY ORDINANCE OF THE TOWN OF LOS GATOS REGULATING TRAFFIC IN THE DOWNTOWN AREA

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ORDINANCE NO. 1434 URGENCY ORDINANCE OF TIIE TOWN OF LOS GATOS REGULATING TRAFFIC IN THE DOWNTOWN AREA An emergency exists in the Town of Los Gatos. The Central Business District of the Town is bounded on the west by a bluff, hills and a crowded residential area, and except for four blocks of East Main Street, on the east by State Highway 17, a freeway. These boundaries converge at the southerly end of Town. Only three streets -- Main Street, State Route 9 and Blossom Hill. Road -- transect the business district from east to west and connect, it with outside areas. Of these three streets, only State Route 9 provides a street connection from the business district to outside areas in both an easterly and westerly direction, but even State Route 9 extends only 0.53 mile in an easterly direction and ends in an intersection with the same narrow, two lane street that carried all of the through traffic from Main Street. Westerly of the business district there are a few streets -- W.est Main Street, Bachman Avenue and six narrow streets connecting with San Benito Avenue which connect the business district with outside areas. The routes these streets traverse are circuitous, and the streets themselves are narrow and wholly impractical for use by other than light residential_ traffic. On many of them two automobiles can pass only at slow speed and cannot pass where automobiles are parked. On a north -south axis the business district is 1.4 miles long. There are only two continuous north -south streets, Santa Cruz Avenue and University Avenue. Like all of the other streets mentioned in this ordinance except State Route 9, they have only two traffic lanes and are unusually narrow. Under ordinary conditions over the years the streets of the central business district have often been full to capacity. Daily at the end of the public school day and during commuting hours there are traffic jams. The central business district and its environs were laid out and built up by about 1900. The cost of widening streets and providing freeway crossings suffic- ient to make a material change in the central business district traffic problem is far beyond the means of the Town, and any street widening or street connection project that would make a major improvement in downtown traffic conditions would - 1 -