Motorists seek updates on highway pavement work
QHow about an update on Highway 17 in Santa Clara County? Some work has been done, which looks like the final layer and in other areas it looks like patchwork.…
You mentioned that Highway 12 in the North Bay was going to be paved with rubberized asphalt and a layer of open-graded pavement on top. I thought the whole point of rubberized asphalt is that it is much quieter and a bit more energy efficient. Doesn’t putting a layer of something else on top defeat that? …
The new asphalt on Interstate 280 from Magdalena to Highway 84 is great. The road looks mostly finished and perfectly striped, but the unfinished lanes and shoulders are all an inch higher than the new asphalt. Why? I’m assuming there is some fancy top layer still to be done. — Bob M., Jim Bodwin and Steve Rempel
A
Your assumption is right. Pavement, brighter lane lines and drains will be installed this year on the Santa Clara County side of
Highway 17. The top layer will be open-graded pavement to provide better traction in rainy weather. Open-grade pavement is porous, allowing water to seep to the nonporous levels of asphalt where it runs off the road. The same work will be done on Interstate 280 and Highway 12.
Q
I bought my first electric vehicle in 2016 and love it. We have an electric for driving around the South Bay (90-mile range on a single charge) and a gas car for trips. We now put less than 3,000 miles on the gas car every year, because we love driving the electric.
A very good resource for locating charge stations is a phone app and website, PlugShare at www.plugshare.com. We find it very useful.
— Matthew Caprile
A
Matthew has more to share.
Q
Concerning the paucity of charging stations in downtown San Jose, if one uses PlugShare
to display a map, one sees that most of the charging locations are within a handful of blocks in the center of downtown. There are none in Japantown, east of San Jose State University (except one lone unit at Happy Hollow) and none north of St. James.
The vast majority are inside garages, so you have to pay the parking fee on top of electricity. There are a few chargers curbside or in free lots, but they are either outside downtown or on the edges of downtown.
The chargers at Bank of America on Bernal, the Plaza Shopping Center and Princeton Plaza Mall can charge in 10 minutes what it takes hours at home to charge. There is also a fastcharging site at Whole Foods Market on The Alameda.
— Matthew Caprile
A
Thank you, Mr. EV man.
Join Gary Richards for an hourlong chat at noon Wednesdays at www.mercurynews. com/live-chats. Look for Gary at Facebook.com/ mr.roadshow or contact him at mrroadshow@ bayareanewsgroup.com or 408-920-5335.