Public transit can help with growth
It concerns me greatly that a certain council member apparently does not understand the numbers that he is supposed to be deciding on and finds it appropriate procedure to write a July 3 letter to the editor to publish half-truths to stir up public debate in an attempt to gain more traction for his perhaps losing position. Very troubling, and it says much about that man and his ethics.
Thanks to Sunnyvale Mayor Jim Griffith, we now have the facts straight again. Sunnyvale is part of Silicon Valley, and we cannot avoid growth unless we want to send business and jobs elsewhere.
Regarding traffic, there are ways to grow without coming to a gridlock. Every single bus trip has the capacity to take dozens of cars off the road. Every light rail car trip can take dozens of commuters to work and not clog the street; every bike lane and residential living space close enough and well-connected to business areas can convince people to walk or bike instead of getting into their car.
There are many ways to grow jobs and residences without overburdening the traffic or need to keep expanding our asphalt jungle for more cars. Every car that is not joining the daily commute makes life a bit easier for those who need to come from afar or have another reason that gives them no choice but to drive to work. The central question remains: How do we allow more people to work and live in Sunnyvale without the traffic coming to a gridlock? Even if we do not allow more residences and chase workers away to the fringes of Silicon Valley, that would not improve traffic, since a lot of traffic comes from commuters outside the city.
I see it as much better to allow people to live close to work, even to encourage living close to work so that the commute can be made using non-motorized vehicles.
I think this is a better approach than to stop building, because that would either cause businesses to move elsewhere or it will make traffic even worse, since workers commuting from far away suburbs have no other choice than to drive to work.
Cor van de Water
Sunnyvale
Condos will impact the city greatly
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky. . . Pete Seeger sang these words decades ago. Today he might sing: High rise condos in the valley Ticky tacky condos of concrete At age 6, I lived in a row house in Baltimore like those arising in Sunnyvale. A woman lived with her blind mother on our third floor. The mother was alone all day, confined to a bed crawling with bedbugs. Our next door neighbor used to lay her scattered rugs on a front porch balcony we shared. Foul with dog urine, they made our porch unusable. When in my 30s, my military husband returned from Southeast Asia and we moved to Washington, DC. Temporarily, we lived months in a fourth-floor walk-up apartment with six children under age 11.
The walls between apartments were very thin, and nightly the kids wanted to know what the loud oohs, ahs and bangs from the next apartment were. Row houses and condos are not good places to raise children.
High-rise condos now building in Sunnyvale will add 35,000 new residents. Traffic may slow to 10 miles per hour at 25 of our 60 major intersections instead of the present nine now graded F.
The new workers in the valley
All work in cubicles the same They all wear blue jeans and T-shirts and they all look just the same.
Some condos are not even built on streets. One complex of 23 buildings of 103 units is behind a chicken restaurant, motel, commercial center and old apartments. It has one palm-lined narrow entry into the complex and a hidden secret second exit winding through to a side street now in process.
Hundreds of residents could be locked in should an accident or fire block the main entryway to El Camino. This has a community center but no outdoor recreation area. It’s all sold out for $1 million or more.
High rise condos in the valley Gone a place of Heart’s Delight Ticky tacky all the same Concrete’n Hard Hats now reign.
Arlene Goetze
Sunnyvale
Growth will continue in Silicon Valley
In the San Francisco Bay Area growth is happening. People want to live here. People want to work here. The Sunnyvale City Council does not have the option of telling these people to move to the Boston Loop or North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park or somewhere in Texas like Austin, Dallas or Houston.
We are part of a larger local community and Sunnyvale needs to do its part. We can whine about this or we can be prepared.
Right now, Sunnyvale is working on a plan to cover development into the future–in fact, possibly to 2035. They are looking at worst-case scenarios, knowing the pressure on housing and business space is likely to remain strong far into the future. They are looking at the impacts of the inevitable growth from surrounding cities, because Santa Clara, Cupertino, Mountain View and Milpitas will be doing their part to address growth.
What is the alternative? Refusing to do our part? In that case, the pressure on our facilities will not substantially decrease. Instead, we will find our city unable to manage traffic, unable to provide services, unable to keep housing even vaguely affordable.
I would invite those who are vocally against the current draft of the future plan to do the following: get their facts straight, deal with the reality that we cannot pretend growth can be eliminated, and offer well-analyzed proposals for the best ways to deal with growth, with realistic options for housing, business presence, public services like schools, parks, library, civic center, commercial services, traffic and resources.
It is neither desirable nor necessary to be adversarial on this issue. In a democracy, what works best is when people with diverse approaches to the same problem offer their best suggestions and then work with others to develop an optimum solution. We only have one problem: growth will continue in Silicon Valley. How do we best do our fair share to address this?
Patricia Collins
SNAIL Neighborhood
