On Sept. 15, the Town Council held a special study session to share an overview of the plans to redesign the often congested Highway 17/Highway 9 interchange near downtown Los Gatos.
The plan comes as part of a joint initiative between the Town of Los Gatos, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and the California Department of Transportation to ease gridlock beach traffic on the highway and in Los Gatos by replacing the aging cloverleaf interchange with a “spread diamond” configuration.
At the meeting, VTA project manager Chris Lilley explained that the current design creates a bottleneck due to the short distances between the on-ramps and off-ramps. During weekends and heat waves, when traffic tends to be heaviest, drivers often exit the freeway to avoid the slowdown and end up driving through Los Gatos. This, in turn, contributes to the “traffic degradation and congestion” that often plagues streets like University Avenue and Winchester Boulevard on popular beach days…