March Monthly Lunch
Please join us for our monthly lunch event in collaboration with the Women's Transportation Seminar.
Presentation Topic Overview:
In early 2015, VTA initiated a new phase of its Complete Streets program by beginning a series of corridor studies to implement Complete Streets elements along select roadways in Santa Clara County. This planning effort is a partnership between VTA and its Member Agencies to transform select roadways into high-quality, multimodal streets that prioritize bicycle, pedestrian and transit travel while still serving motorists.
They are currently launching the public outreach phase for the Tasman Complete Streets Corridor Study, which will evaluate Tasman Drive from Morse Avenue in Sunnyvale, all the way to Great Mall Parkway at Montague Expressway in Milpitas. The study area includes Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose, and Milpitas. The purpose of these multi-jurisdictional planning studies is to identify opportunities along selected transportation corridors to demonstrate and advance Complete Streets improvements. The study will evaluate transit travel times, signal coordination, timing modifications, multimodal access, safety, and connectivity. VTA bus routes 55, 58, 121, 140, 200, 321, 330, 825, and VTA light rail lines 901 and 902 run through this segment of Tasman Drive/Great Mall Parkway, in addition to the ACE and Capitol Corridor trains that serve the Great America Station at Lafayette Street. The new Milpitas BART Station, which is slated to open in late 2017, is located at the east end of the study corridor.
VTA has two other Complete Streets studies in the works: Story-Keyes (between SR-87 and Capitol Expressway in San Jose) which had outreach meetings and walk audits last fall, and Bascom Avenue (between I-880 and SR-85, which includes San Jose, Campbell, and unincorporated areas) which will have outreach meetings and walk audits this June.
The project website is: www.vta.org/complete-streets
Karen Gauss
Karen Gauss is a Public Communications Specialist at VTA. She handles community outreach for construction and planning projects, which include the Complete Streets Corridor Studies, Santa Clara Pedestrian Undercrossing, 237 Express Lanes, and Rail Rehabilitation. The Community Outreach and Public Affairs division at VTA also handles community meetings and public relations for the BART extension to San Jose, the Next Network transit redesign, 280-Wolfe and 101-Zanker interchange projects, and Alum Rock BRT, among others. Prior to VTA, Karen worked at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
A local of Milpitas and San Jose, she has a BA in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz, and Master of Urban Planning from Texas A&M University. She spent 3 years living in France in the early 2000s, and has traveled to over 200 cities in Southeast Asia and India. She lives in Campbell and commutes to work by bicycle in dry weather, and by light rail when the Guadalupe River Trail is flooded.
SP2 Communal Bar + Restaurant
72 N Almaden Ave San Jose, CA 95110