Some $10 billion in Federal, State, and regional funding will be spent building new BART and high-speed rail lines into San Jose Diridon Station. Given that unprecedented level of transit investment, we can expect San Jose to make major zoning changes, right?
Well last Tuesday, council was presented the Staff recommendation. And as you read this, keep in mind they hired consultants, and did over one year of public outreach meetings to come up with this 1-line recommendation:
Parking goals only, no proposed changes to current code
So despite a 10-figure expenditure on new rail lines, San Jose will keep its existing auto-centric development patterns. And what might that look like? The Alternatives Analysis Report projects 15,000 new parking spaces in full build-out scenarios. That is in addition to some 5,000 parking spaces for the station itself. And if a new ballpark is built, there could be even more parking.
Ironically, the San Jose decision comes at the same time the CA High-Speed Rail Authority adopted its Station Area Development Planning Guidelines. That policy calls for “reduced parking requirements for retail, office, and residential uses due to their transit access and walkability.”
But the planners did make some pretty pictures! Too bad they bear no resemblance to reality.
Yeah, these parking numbers are atrocious. Let’s make the one area in San Jose where frequent, regional and local transit converge really easy to drive to! Amazing logic. If you read the memorandum from Mayor Reed, it’s clear that he doesn’t really care about the opportunities for transit and car-light development at Diridon. Instead, he’s more concerned about maintaining auto access and parking at the HP pavilion.
Seems like if they just partner with HP Pavilion to use their parking lot the solution would be solved; save money on making new lots and give the venue owners a new source of revenue. Sure, when there’s a big event HP would deny parking but people are taking transit TO HP in that case anyway. Every other day that massive lot sits empty.
So many San Jose residents really want to take public transportation, and yet they don’t because it is so inconvenient to do. Aren’t our local government leaders supposed to set a good example and help facilitate the switch from cars to PT? I wonder how the Mayor and his staff get to work.. As for me, I take the bus.
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