San Jose residents and bicycle advocates are fighting to stop a looming obstacle in their path.
Recreational cyclists and bike commuters traveling from San Jose to Santa Clara and Sunnyvale on Ewert Road have been horrified to learn of a planned Oct. 1 closure. The road, which borders the airport, is an essential conduit to Airport Boulevard and the Guadalupe River Trail for cyclists and pedestrians. The closure by San Jose Mineta International Airport, in conjunction with the city, would reverse efforts made 11 years ago as part of San Jose’s Vision Zero plan, a program created to reduce traffic fatalities.
When this news outlet reached out to airport officials, they backtracked on the timing of the road closure.
“Given projected rainfall associated with El Niño this winter, the previously announced Oct. 1 closure is being deferred to give the city additional time to evaluate appropriate options for maintaining a safe route for people biking and walking,” airport spokesperson Julie Jarratt told San José Spotlight. “The city continues to work on bike safety around the airport and will share the new closure date and information on the route with enough time for riders to plan an alternate route.”
San Jose Councilmember Michael Mulcahy, whose District 6 includes the airport, said the pause provides an opportunity to identify the safest and most durable path forward regarding the concerns surrounding Ewert Road.
“I look forward to this work with the airport, the Department of Transportation and community members to deliver a thoughtful, long-term solution,” he told San José Spotlight.
San Jose resident Mikhail Haurylau, who regularly rides his bicycle to his job in Santa Clara, is extremely concerned about the pending closure.
“Ewert Road had been critical for me to get to work safely,” he told San José Spotlight. “Losing this road is going to send me through a detour, which is less safe and does not even exist in the winter when the trail gets flooded. Then it takes me all the way around through the First Street intersection with Trimble Road and a bunch of six-lane roads, which even with 20 years of bike community experience, still scare me.”
On Sept. 4, a bicyclist was hit and killed by a motorist at the intersection of Trimble Road and North First Street. Police said the driver went through a green light on Trimble Road and struck a bicyclist in the crosswalk — the 33rd traffic-related death of the year.
The Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, an advisory body to the city Department of Transportation, submitted a recent 20-page report to the San Jose Transportation and Environment Committee as part of the Vision Zero Action Plan Update. Among its priorities is preventing the closure of Ewert Road. It urges the City Council, transportation department and SJC to keep Ewert Road open to cyclists permanently.
“Ewert Road isn’t a shortcut, and it isn’t redundant with any other infrastructure. It’s a flat, direct east-west link off the Guadalupe River Trail to get around the airport between San Jose and Santa Clara,” the report said. “Ewert Road has had a public bike path for all 30 years of its existence.”
Jarratt said Ewert Road was originally built as an internal airport access road and isn’t designed as a public multimodal corridor.
“Over time, there have been collisions and security incidents involving vehicles and bicyclists on the road, resulting in injuries and law enforcement calls,” she said. ” The airport reviewed the area in relation to federal airport safety and security requirements and determined that removing public access was the appropriate step to reduce the risk of future incidents.”
Haojun Li, co-lead of Bike San Jose, uses Ewert Road to commute to Sunnyvale. He said not having access to it in the winter is unsafe.
“Because of daylight savings, after 5 p.m., it gets really dark,” he told San José Spotlight. “Sometimes it’s raining. It’s just extremely dangerous.”
He said the detour option crosses busy Highway 101 on-ramps and off-ramps, and in the dark it’s hard for motorists to see cyclists.
“There’s such mental anguish coming down from that detour, especially coming home,” he said.
Jordan Moldow, chair of San Jose’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and co-lead of Bike San Jose, said San Jose’s commitment to Vision Zero requires structural changes within all aspects of the public right of way.
“The airport should put its foot forward to accommodate bicyclists safely on Ewert Road,” he told San José Spotlight, “rather than closing the road and forcing them to go somewhere else, which is almost certainly going to be more dangerous than a road that has virtually zero car traffic.”
Ewert Road is a regional connector for residents not only from Santa Clara and San Jose, but also Mountain View, Palo Alto and even Menlo Park. Betsy Megas, chair of the Santa Clara Bicycle and Pedestrian and VTA Bicycle and Pedestrian advisory committees, speaking for herself, said San Jose and Santa Clara bike projects rely on the road as a connector.
“The airport is a barrier in a major way to transportation, and there are not good alternatives around the north end. Ewert is it,” she told San José Spotlight. “If you close Ewert Road, we’ve got this sort of orphan infrastructure that was built with public money. The whole bicycle plan in that area is expecting Ewert Road to be there.”
Brent Pearse, VTA principal transportation planner, said Ewert Road is identified as part of a cross county, long distance bicycle corridor in VTA’s 2018 Countywide Bike Plan. When segments of the Guadalupe River Trail flood during the wet season, it creates long detours for people traveling between San Jose, Santa Clara and North County employment areas, he said.
“Ewert Road has historically provided an alternate route that avoids those seasonal flooding issues,” Pearse told San José Spotlight.
Moldow said Ewert Road is the most direct, flat and safest route between downtown San Jose and Central Expressway. He said it isn’t clear why airport officials chose to close the road.
“During public meetings, they offered vague safety-related reasons, which were unconvincing,” he told San José Spotlight, adding a tall fence with barbed wire on top separates Ewert Road from the airfield.
Contact Lorraine Gabbert at [email protected].
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