The plan VTA presented to the Los Gatos Town Council on September 15 is a fix for a routing problem. It reaches the drivers on University Avenue only through the apps that sent them there. The goal is to make Highway 17 the fastest route to the beach again, so the apps that send beach traffic down local streets start sending it back to the freeway. That goal shapes everything in the proposal: where the new lanes go, why signals replace the free-flowing ramps, and why a few Los Gatos intersections are expected to get slower even as the overall picture improves.
The 600 cars an hour the cloverleaf loses on beach days
The interchange where Highway 9, the Los Gatos-Saratoga Road, meets Highway 17 is a cloverleaf. The loop ramps sit close together, so drivers merging on and drivers peeling off share a short stretch of road. VTA calls these short weaving distances, and they are the bottleneck. The agency also says the current layout has inadequate facilities for people on bikes and on foot.
At the September 15 study session, VTA project manager Chris Lilley gave the cost of that design in numbers. On a typical weekday, the interchange moves about 3,900 vehicles per hour. On a beach weekend, that drops to roughly 3,300. That is about 600 fewer cars an hour through the same stretch of road on the days when the most people want to use it.
Those cars still have to go somewhere. According to 2022 VTA data cited at the meeting, about 24% of the cars on Highway 17 cut through Los Gatos to get around the bottleneck during peak weekend hours. Lilley named University Avenue and Winchester Boulevard as streets that see the "traffic degradation and congestion" on popular beach days.
How a phone decides your street is a shortcut
Udit Molakatalla, the project's traffic engineer from DKS Associates, explained how the cut-through traffic spreads. Most navigation apps choose routes by the fastest travel time between two points. When Highway 17 slows down, the apps start sending drivers onto Winchester Boulevard, University Avenue and Los Gatos Boulevard. When those streets fill up, the apps look for the next fastest path, and the traffic spreads deeper into neighborhood streets.
This explains why beach traffic can show up on streets that seem to have nothing to do with the beach. Molakatalla described the project's goal as reversing that spread. If the freeway becomes the fastest route again, the apps send traffic back to it.
The town has looked at the problem from the local-street side before. In June 2025, the Town's transportation commission endorsed a Beach Traffic Measures report and sent it to the Town Council. The ideas reported at the time included congestion pricing, a University corridor limited to buses, bikes and pedestrians, and a pedestrian mall on North Santa Cruz. They were proposals, not measures in operation. The interchange project takes the other approach. It tries to remove the reason for the detour instead of blocking the detour.
Three ways the redesign tries to win the apps back
The proposal replaces the cloverleaf with what VTA calls a "spread diamond" interchange. According to the Town's meeting packet, the main features are:
- A third lane in each direction on Highway 17
- A high-occupancy vehicle lane on the northbound diagonal on-ramp
- Retaining walls along Highway 17 to limit right-of-way impacts, grading and tree removal
- Traffic signals at the Highway 9 and ramp intersections, with ramp meters on both on-ramps
- A new, realigned six-lane structure carrying Highway 9 over the freeway
Lilley described three ways those features work against cut-through traffic. First, the extra lanes run between Lark Avenue and the interchange. They give the freeway more room to absorb a backup before drivers, or their apps, give up and exit onto local streets. Second, the new layout is meant to close the gap between the 3,900 vehicles an hour on a weekday and the 3,300 on a beach weekend. Third, ramp meters give operators more control over how much traffic enters the freeway at once.
The HOV lane on the northbound diagonal ramp has a specific job. It is meant to discourage drivers from cutting ahead of the queue, which adds to the cut-through traffic.
What Los Gatos gives up in the trade
The signals that make the ramps manageable also change how Highway 9 drives. Today's ramps flow freely. The new ones would be controlled intersections with traffic lights. Lilley acknowledged this will cause modest increases in travel time along Highway 9 and called it a deliberate trade for safer conditions for people on bikes and on foot.
The project's traffic study covered about 19 intersections in the surrounding area. Lilley said not every one will improve. Some will see modest increases in delay, most notably the two new signalized intersections. He also said the study may not capture every affected street.
The project uses a measure called Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress to rate the crossing for people on bikes:
| Today's cloverleaf | Proposed spread diamond | |
|---|---|---|
| Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress | 4, the worst score | 1, the best score |
| Definition used by the Active Transportation Resource Center | "not suitable for children or most adults" | "comfortable for all ages and abilities including children" |
| Ramp control | Free-flowing loop ramps | Signalized intersections, metered on-ramps |
| Highway 9 overcrossing | Existing structure | Realigned six-lane structure |
The packet shows the new overcrossing with sidewalks on both sides, Class I, II and IV bicycle facilities, landscaped buffers, and raised or curbed medians.
"What we're trying to accomplish is to eliminate State Route 17 as a barrier to active transportation." That was Lilley's summary of the bike and pedestrian goal.
The project map also shows a "New connection to Los Gatos Creek Trail (by Town of Los Gatos)" near University Avenue and Highway 9. The materials released so far do not say exactly where it ties in, which side of the freeway it uses, or how it crosses. People who walk or ride that part of the Creek Trail will have to wait for the environmental document for those details.
The money covers the drawings, and the construction dates depend on the rest
The cost estimate is now $178 million, $16 million more than the 2025 estimate. VTA's August 2026 fact sheet lists the funding sources as 2016 Measure B, local funds and other funds as they become available. Of that total, about $13.2 million in Measure B funding and about $1.4 million from the Town are committed. Lilley said that should be nearly enough to finish final design.
Building it is a separate question. VTA's SR 17 Corridor project page lists this schedule, and notes that full funding for the later phases has not been finalized:
- Environmental approval, 2021 to 2027
- Design completion, 2027 to 2029
- Construction, 2029 to 2031
The Los Gatan reports that if everything goes according to plan, the revamp will be finished by 2031. Until then, every beach weekend runs through the current cloverleaf.
Where the public gets a say, and when
The next opening for residents is the environmental review. The project is being reviewed under both state and federal environmental law, CEQA and NEPA. The September 15 staff memo said the Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Assessment was "being finalized for public circulation and public comment." One slide in the original packet said the draft had already been circulated. The revised slides presented at the meeting say the document is "nearing completion." They list filing a Notice of Availability with the state and opening public comment as next steps. As of September 30, 2026, no comment period has opened and no deadline has been posted.
When the Notice of Availability is filed, the comment period will be the place to raise questions the slides have not answered yet. Those include where the Creek Trail connection lands, which of the 19 studied intersections get slower, and how long the Highway 9 signals add to a trip across town. The Los Gatan's account of the study session and the Mercury News write-up are the most detailed public summaries so far.
In the meantime, there is separate, shorter-term work on the same road. The Town posted a Caltrans notice for overnight Highway 17 lane closures between Hebard Road and the Santa Cruz County line for roadway repairs and safety improvements. The closures run Monday, September 21 through Friday, October 9. Northbound lanes close from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., and southbound lanes close from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.
At Georgia Phillips, we follow projects like the Hwy 17/Hwy 9 interchange because they shape how a street in Los Gatos feels on a Saturday in July, years before a shovel hits the ground. If you want to know how this plan and its 2029 to 2031 construction window could affect a specific street or commute, schedule a personalized consultation and we'll go through the details with you.
