Funding Lifeline for Homestead Road SRTS Project
- Alon Golan
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
The vital Homestead Road Safe Routes to School (SRTS) project is gaining new momentum after a prolonged funding pause. The project, which spans Homestead Road from Foothill Expressway to Hollenbeck Avenue , aims to dramatically improve bicycle and pedestrian safety for students at West Valley Elementary, Cupertino Middle School, and Homestead High School. Key design plans include filling sidewalk gaps, widening shared-use paths, converting existing bike lanes into buffered or protected lanes, and eliminating dangerous free-right turn lanes at Foothill Expressway and the SR-85 on-ramp.
While the initial 35% design phase was completed in August 2024 using 2016 Measure B funds , further progress on environmental clearance and final design had been temporarily halted due to a remaining $2.42M funding gap.
A local breakthrough promises to kickstart the project once again. Sunnyvale and Los Altos have each stepped up to cover $750,000 of the shortfall. While Cupertino has requested a detailed itemization of the costs before making a financial commitment, their expected agreement will close the immediate gap and allow VTA to resume work.
Once the local cities have approved funding, environmental clearance is scheduled to complete by June 2027, and the final engineering design by October 2028.
With the environmental clearance and final engineering design complete, the project will be in a much more favorable position to compete for funding for the final phases of the project. The right-of-way phase is estimated to cost $1 million and run from late 2027 to late 2029. The final construction phase will cost $16.8 million and is projected to occur in 2029-2031.
We will continue to closely follow progress and advocate to our local city councils to ensure this critical safety corridor finally becomes a reality.
About the Author
Alon Golan is on the Board of Sunnyvale Safe Streets. He strongly believes in making the streets safe for all modes of transportation. In his spare time, he likes to think about how to fix the transportation problem in the US.
