A new Web site recently launched aims to inform the public of why a future Stoneridge Drive extension would be beneficial to Pleasanton’s traffic plight.
The Web site, www.stoppleasantongridlock.com, was created a few weeks ago by some neighbors who say they have extensively researched the highly controversial issue of whether to keep an old proposal in the city’s General Plan to extend Stoneridge east to El Charro Road–providing another link to Livermore.
Jereen Gilbert said the group consists of about 10 active members and an e-mail list of about 200 people.
Two meetings have been held so far–one on Oct. 19 with Mayor Jennifer Hosterman and Councilman Matt Sullivan in attendance, and another on Oct. 23 with Councilmen Steve Brozosky and Jerry Thorne. Group member Nancy Allen said more than 150 people from various neighborhoods attended the meetings.
What prompted Gilbert to get involved is that she noticed more children being hit by cars while riding their bicycles and near-misses at major intersections of Valley Avenue and Santa Rita Road–which she said have become the overflow for the traffic Stoneridge Drive was planned to handle.
Gilbert, who lives near Mohr Avenue and Kolln Street, said she initially was against the Stoneridge extension, even voting to oppose it. But after poring over city documents including zoning maps, environmental reports and traffic studies for the past year, she said she has done a 180.
“I’m as guilty as the next person. I wasn’t very educated at the time and I voted along the lines of no Stoneridge extension,” she said.
What she said she discovered through her research and talking to people in the community is that a lot of the traffic is of the intra-city variety, not outside people using Pleasanton streets as a cut-through to get to places such as Tracy.
“This is people who live and work around here,” she said. “If they don’t live in Pleasanton, they live right over the line in Dublin and Livermore.
Allen said if the Stoneridge extension were completed, it would disperse traffic on Interstate 580 and traffic within the city more evenly. Those who live in Pleasanton or Livermore coming from the Hacienda Business Park after work would be more likely to take Stoneridge to get home while workers from the business park who live further away such as in Tracy, would use I-580, Allen said.
“Everybody will be able to get closer to where they need to get in a more efficient way,” Allen said.
The construction of about 3,500 homes off of Stoneridge Drive is the reason the traffic problem exists, Gilbert said. In the General Plan from 1986, the Stoneridge extension was always planned, she said.
“We’ve already built the homes; we can’t not build Stoneridge at this point,” Gilbert said.
