LOS GATOS — Hot weather means it’s high season for sandy excursions, but frustrated residents and town officials in Silicon Valley’s gateway to the Pacific Ocean say they have had it with the onslaught of beach-bound motorists using their downtown as a shortcut to fun in the sun.
With so many beachgoers trying to eschew the notorious sunny weekend clog-spot of Highway 17, Los Gatos’s main arteries have become the bane of those who live and work in the midst of a traffic nightmare.
“For all of North Santa Cruz Avenue it’s like a wall of people coming through,” said Sophie Maddix, a salesperson at the women’s clothing store Bettina’s of Los Gatos, referring to the retail and entertainment strip that parallels Highway 17 just a few blocks away.
The big problem for local businesses is not enough of them are stopping — but they are scaring off shoppers who want to do just that.
Now, the town is fighting back. On Saturday and Sunday, Los Gatos is deploying two extra police officers on motorcycles to keep close watch at key intersections that residents say have been reduced to frustrating, fuming gridlock over the past weekend and Fourth of July holiday.
“They will be making sure that drivers are not blocking intersections, and those who are will be cited,” said Los Gatos Assistant Town Manager Laurel Prevetti. “We want people to know that the town is furious that people are cutting through the town to go to the coast.”
The town also plans to post signs in key locations advising people to get back on the freeway rather than drive through town, Prevetti said. Officials believe that with the traffic it creates along Santa Cruz and University avenues and other neighborhood streets, the detour through Los Gatos actually makes for a longer trip than resigning to the fate of the freeway.
“We want visitors to come to Los Gatos and stay to enjoy it, rather than wind up sitting in a traffic jam,” said Mayor Marcia Jensen in a news release.
While it’s not illegal to use city streets, residents said the jammed-in drivers get impatient, disobeying traffic lights, refusing to yield to pedestrians and ultimately creating a hostile environment that they don’t welcome in their well-heeled downtown.
“Los Gatos police are pretty good at giving out tickets,” said longtime resident Patrick Lamey.
Lamey said that while there have always been people who cut through town, this year has seen a dramatic spike. Many believe it’s because of mobile navigation applications such as Waze, which recommend surface-street shortcuts when freeways are packed.
Not so, said Julie Mossler, communications director for Google-owned Waze.
“This isn’t possible because we alternate which routes are used, based on real-time conditions, to avoid generating congestion of our own,” she said. “It simply wouldn’t be effective to route a large amount of Wazers off a highway and down the same surface street at once.”
Mossler added that the app collects data from drivers on surface roads as well as the freeway and is constantly recalculating, so if going through town should become the slower option it would no longer be recommended.
City officials say they don’t want to discourage people from indulging in Los Gatos’ numerous culinary offerings and entertainment options.
“I wish that the beach traffic was directed at the shops,” said Mika Sakuae, a saleswoman at Los Gatos bakery Manresa Bread, whose commute to her Santa Cruz home takes 45 minutes to an hour. “There’s a lot of local businesses here and I wish people would come here and grab a snack on their way to the beach.”
The city is looking into long-term solutions that would include Caltrans sign boards on Highway 17 advising motorists to stay on the freeway and not cut through Los Gatos, and has also hired a consultant for $10,000 to $15,000 to study the traffic problem.
“It’s a small cost to have some real data and have professional expertise about genuine solutions so we don’t just push the problem around town and we actually solve it,” Prevetti said.
The city has made it a priority with Labor Day approaching, and officials say the logjam presents a public safety risk since it has the potential to slow down response times for emergency vehicles.
“If we can allow our residents to access their homes in a reasonable amount of time and leave their homes in a reasonable amount of time,” Prevetti said, “that would be a success.”
Contact Eric Kurhi at 408-920-5852. Follow him at Twitter.com/erickurhi. Contact Sophie Mattson at smattson@mercurynews.com.
