Which Santa Clara City Has The Most Freeways?
I have often thought my city of Mountain View is overburdened with freeway exits. The city has three freeways, each of which has an interchange approximately every quarter mile. The California Highway Design Manual recommends an interchange at most every half mile in urban areas.
This overabundance of traffic infrastructure not only takes up a lot of valuable land and emits tire an break particulate matter across the city’s neighborhoods, but it also decreases the functionality of the freeways themselves. Every freeway entrance and exit contributes to congestion
Especially when the ramps are too short, like at Charleston
Gathering Data
I downloaded the Santa Clara County road centerline dataset.
Then I filtered out only those whose roadclass was Ramp or Freeway. Finally I removed all ramps that were not joined to a freeway (ramps for expressways, mostly)
I eventually realized that untangling the mess to determine a specific discreet count of freeway entrances and exits per jurisdiction would not work. Too many edge cases. There was no way to automate it, and I wasn’t about to do the calculation by hand.
What I realized I could do was calculate the number of linear feet of freeway and ramp in each city. This would approximate how much real estate was dedicated to freeway infrastructure.
Results
| City | Square Miles | Linear Feet of Freeway | Linear Feet Per Square Mile |
|---|---|---|---|
| MOUNTAIN VIEW | 12.19 | 1045642.30 | 85711.52 |
| MILPITAS | 13.54 | 908039.05 | 67021.48 |
| CAMPBELL | 6.09 | 279426.06 | 45848.25 |
| LOS GATOS | 11.65 | 484091.61 | 41526.51 |
| CUPERTINO | 11.25 | 463416.72 | 41158.96 |
| SAN JOSE | 180.70 | 6638120.55 | 36735.23 |
| SUNNYVALE | 22.89 | 812001.91 | 35471.60 |
| LOS ALTOS HILLS | 9.07 | 268831.91 | 29616.14 |
| MORGAN HILL | 12.90 | 310636.90 | 24072.12 |
| GILROY | 16.55 | 340628.54 | 20576.78 |
| SANTA CLARA | 18.18 | 250340.06 | 13762.90 |
| SARATOGA | 12.78 | 130633.59 | 10221.37 |
| PALO ALTO | 25.96 | 192891.25 | 7430.01 |
| LOS ALTOS | 6.52 | 31410.47 | 4816.10 |
Suspicions confirmed, Mountain View indeed has the most land devoted to freeway of any city in the county.