A vibrant purple ribbon fluttered within the wind towards an overcast backdrop after Los Gatos Mayor Matthew Hudes used a pair of cartoonishly huge scissors to chop it, formally opening a brand new bridge on the Los Gatos Creek Path on Thursday afternoon.
The trailhead connector bridge is now open to the general public, giving pedestrians, bicyclists and different path customers new paths between the Los Gatos Creek Path and either side of Freeway 9.
Talking from the bridge below Freeway 9, Los Gatos Public Works Director Nicolle Burnham mentioned the connection features a concrete walkway into city from the path to College Avenue. On the north aspect, there’s a switchback to permit entry to Freeway 9 from the Freeway 17 offramp. The mission additionally consists of retaining partitions, ramps, handrails and trailheads.
The city “prioritized having this high-visibility connector on this key roadway,” Burnham mentioned. “Highway 9 is a key road in town, and the other trail accesses are kind of in more isolated, less highly-used roads, so they’re less visible. So this provides a really apparent and easily accessible location for access to the trail.”
The bridge price about $9 million, mentioned Burnham, however the city might solely afford round $1.5 million of that quantity. The remainder of the funds got here from grants from companions. The Valley Transportation Authority, or VTA, supplied the preliminary grants for the design from Measure B funds, a countywide gross sales tax that helps transportation tasks.
“We were really fortunate to have good project partners,” Burnham mentioned. “Caltrans was very supportive of the project. VTA was incredible supportive, not just with that initial design funding but with construction funding,”
Caltrans, Pacific Fuel & Electrical, Comcast, AT&T, Granite Development and Zoon Engineering additionally collaborated on the mission with the city.
The mission started as an idea in 2008 earlier than designs have been drafted in 2020, Burnham mentioned.
“I think any time you have big aspirational projects like this, it can take a number of years to figure out how to actually deliver the project and put together the money for funding,” Burnham mentioned.
The bridge the place the ribbon-cutting occurred was prefabricated, in-built South Carolina earlier than being shipped throughout the nation in a single piece, Burnham mentioned. Lane closures on Freeway 9 allowed development crews to carry the bridge from the freeway and place it over Los Gatos Creek. Development took about 18 months to finish.
Burnham mentioned the following steps will probably be to get some signage up on the path to direct individuals easy methods to use the bridge to get to city and to neighboring communities like Campbell.
“This is something that has been a long time coming and will serve us for a very long time,” Hudes mentioned. “And when I say ‘us,’ it’s not just the residents of Los Gatos, but it’s our visitors, it’s our businesses, and also it includes people who never knew about this and just have discovered this.”
