A great win for the community surrounding Willow Street in San Jose! Shortly after the VTA Board of Directors adopted the 2018 Story-Keyes Complete Streets Study Final Report, the City of San Jose was awarded a $12.9 million grant from the Active Transportation Program (ATP) to fund the Willow and Keyes segment of the complete street corridor. The total project cost is $19.6 million.
 
From 2016 to 2018, the City of San Jose in partnership with VTA prepared a comprehensive, community-driven multimodal safety study and complete streets plan-Story-Keyes Complete Streets Study, for the corridor of Willow Street, Graham Avenue, Goodyear Street, Keyes Street, and Story Road. The Study built off the City of San Jose and VTA's commitment to providing complete streets to improve mobility and safety for all roadway users. This project corridor (Willow Street, Graham Avenue, Goodyear Street, and Keyes Street, between SR-87 and 3rd Street) is a portion of a 4-mile long Study.
 
It is part of the corridor which serves and connects many disadvantaged neighborhoods to key local and regional destinations in the central part of San Jose, including commercial land uses, schools, churches, businesses, recreational trails, and the larger citywide bicycle network. In addition, the project corridor serves VTA bus line 25, which has the 3rd highest ridership in the VTA regional transit system.



The funded portion of the project will look at closing bicycle and sidewalk gaps by constructing a new sidewalk and protected bicycle lanes. Deficient pedestrian and bicycle facilities will be improved to maximize protection along the project corridor. There will be improvements to connectivity and accessibility for community residents and businesses with improved access to transit, schools, parks and trails, and other key local and regional destinations. Once completed, community members will benefit from continuous, safe, and more comfortable pedestrian and bicycle facilities.



Next Steps
The first engineering phase is scheduled to begin 2021, during which the City of San Jose’s engineering design tasks and environmental studies are undertaken to advance the Final Design. The Final Design phase will happen in 2022, where the remaining engineering tasks are completed and the project’s construction contract documents are produced, followed by construction beginning in 2023.
 
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