Group Is Working to Improve Road Warriors’ Lot

LOS BANOS —  On a foggy Saturday in December, a dozen members of the Commuter Alliance gather for the group’s monthly meeting at Brandie’s restaurant.

Over bacon and eggs, they swap highway war stories and the latest gossip about road conditions through the narrow, accident-prone Pacheco Pass. A CHP officer invited to speak about driving in the fog hasn’t shown, so the talk turns to the marathon commutes these folks make every day. The record-holder is a man whose CB handle is Ghost: He drives three hours from La Grange to Sunnyvale--then three hours back at night.

The majority of the members live here--in a farm town that never figured to be one leg of a Los Angeles-like commute--because they can no longer afford housing closer to their Silicon Valley jobs.

“For most of us, if we figure how much time we spend in the car, it works out to two months a year,” said Tom Higby, a microwave test engineer who works in Santa Clara.

But this group of unfailingly polite middle-class engineers, office managers and personnel executives is way beyond griping. Though it would be a stretch to call them militant, they are determined to stand up for anonymous wheelmen and women everywhere who pass their lives staring at the bumper sticker of the commuter in front of them in traffic.

The voice of the 78-member alliance has already been heard. They take credit for the installation of emergency call boxes along Highway 152 on the way to Silicon Valley, 90 miles northwest. Their next move is even bolder. They are forming a political action committee to raise money and lobby politicians for road-widening projects.

“We want to speak for all commuters,” said Jerry Knoester, the group’s founder and leader.

It’s time, said Knoester, that elected officials started paying attention to the 9-to-5ers instead of only to the no-growthers and environmentalists who’ve had the road to themselves for so long.

But the Commuter Alliance is just one group adopting unprecedented strategies to help the displaced middle class. In Santa Cruz County, where a median-priced home in October sold for $460,000, Plantronics is considering buying an apartment building to house mid-level employees. San Jose State University has started an endowment fund to boost the salaries of junior engineering faculty. The Santa Clara school district is building subsidized rental housing for teachers on a now-empty school campus.

Recognizing that something has to be done on an even broader scale, the California Chamber of Commerce is heading a project aimed at speeding up construction of new housing and creating incentives for employers to move to places like Los Banos, where housing is still relatively inexpensive. Mayor Michael Amabile said 250 IBM employees alone live in his town.

Facilitating the commute for those folks is the primary goal of the Commuter Alliance. At the December meeting, the group’s agenda included a discussion of what should be carried in a commuter’s emergency kit. Along with jumper cables and road flares, Knoester recommended power bars, drinking water, a first aid kit, rubber gloves and tweezers. All proof that these people don’t drive to work, they trek.

The medical supplies are to address what the members see as an increasingly dangerous drive. The tweezers would be used to pull windshield glass out of the skin of an accident victim. Some members say they see an accident a week along Highway 152 as it winds from Los Banos through Pacheco Pass to head north to San Jose or south to Santa Cruz. The CHP reported 90 injured and nine killed along the route through the first half of the year, a pace that would break a 10-year record for highway fatalities.

Making the drive safer and more tolerable is the Wild Bunch, a CB group within the Alliance that warns drivers of road hazards. Each morning, Martin Wuest, an electronic engineer known as Little Pig for his stuffed pig toys, gets up at 3:15, grabs the cooler he packed the night before and heads out the door to begin his drive to San Jose.

When his VW Golf reaches Wally World (Wal-Mart) at the western edge of town, Little Pig gives a shout to Dutchman, Short Circuit, Knee High and the rest forming up for the caravan over the pass. Once they find out who’s in front, on the “Front Door,” they rely on him or her to warn them what’s up ahead.

If it’s a very foggy morning, the scout may report that it’s a “one-dot fog,” meaning the driver can see only one traffic dot ahead. The scout also reports accidents and Smokey Bears that could slow them down. The caravan is trying to outrun the clock; if something detains them, they could get caught by “the Snake.” The Snake is the bumper-to-bumper line of cars, semis and even tractors that backs up along the ranchland on Highway 152 as the morning wears on.

As he drives, Wuest has to be careful how many Hi-C drinks he downs. Even though he has what’s known as a “commuter bladder,” he doesn’t want to waste time pulling off the road.

If Wuest manages to elude the Snake, he hits the 101 north at 4:45 a.m. At that hour, the traffic is swift, though it can slow at the “Cochrane Road Squeeze,” where the freeway goes from three lanes to two. Correcting this squeeze is one of the alliance’s goals.

When Wuest reaches San Jose, the most direct route to work is the “Bottom of the World,” where the 101 goes under the 280 and 680 freeways. If that’s crowded, he will use the “Top of the World,” the 680. He pulls into the parking lot at Pericom at about 5:15 a.m.

Wuest is lucky he can start work and leave early. Knoester, who works a 6 a.m. shift as a personnel manager for Onizuka Air Force Station in Sunnyvale, leaves work at 3:30 p.m. Even that early, his commute home is a “horrendous” 2- to 2 1/2-hour drive.

Living in Los Banos has been good for his family. It’s a quiet, safe town. His wife stayed home with the kids because they could afford the $900-a-month mortgage on his $50,000 income. His five kids are all well adjusted and out on their own.

But the years of commuting have taken a toll. “It’s tough. When I get home, my wife wants to do something, but I’m bushed.”