Major overhaul ahead for Castro Street at Central Expressway

QA question about the intersection of Castro/Moffett and Central Expressway in Mountain View: Can you convince the powers that be to let pedestrians cross when a train is coming, before letting the Central car traffic go? Because of all the public transit here, there are a lot of people crossing that intersection on foot, and it's a really long wait when the gates go down because of a train. A lot of pedestrians end up jaywalking. It would be safer if pedestrians could get a light to cross. — David Carlton

AGood news … though this will take a few years. Castro Street will be closed at the train tracks and a bicycle/pedestrian undercrossing will be constructed under the expressway and tracks. Caltrain is starting final design on the project and they hope to be in construction in two years.

In the meantime, Caltrain will upgrade the current detection system and provide additional time for the traffic signal to complete the pedestrian phase.

Presently, the train approaching time provided by Caltrain does not allow enough time to complete any active phases of the crossing cycle at this intersection, including pedestrian phases. As a result, when Caltrain receives a preemption signal from a train, they must immediately provide a green light to clear any vehicles on the track before the train reaches the intersection.

QThere is a very dangerous evening construction project at the 237/101 overpass. The issue is no merge lane from the 101 south exit to 237 east. At night, 237 traffic is merged into a single lane (lane 1) before the overpass, which is fine, but merging traffic from 101 southbound is steered by cones to merge immediately into that same lane, with no merge lane available, as currently coned off. There is no yield sign, that I am aware of.

I was nearly involved in a multi-car accident in this area when cars ahead of me stopped in caution, or were forced to, by traffic entering the lane.

The ramp should be closed. While inconvenient, it would address this very dangerous merge issue. If an accident hasn't happened yet, it is highly likely there will be!

— J. Coudy, Sunnyvale

AThe ramp will not be closed for this prep work to rebuild the interchange, but Caltrans will consider providing more warning signs.

QThe light at Giuffrida and Snell in San Jose now cycles a long time and includes the left turn lane signals at 5:20-6 a.m. This makes no sense. The turn lanes typically have zero cars turning into the closed strip mall at that hour. Can something be done about the timing? — Tamara, San Jose

AA fix will be coming soon.