Route 85 (Highway 85)

Community Relations

Client: Santa Clara County Traffic Authority

Contact: Eileen Goodwin (former SCCTA Executive Director) (408) 309-1426

Challenge

In planning stages since the 1950s, Route 85 was the first highway to be built in Silicon Valley in 30 years, stitching together San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Campbell, Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Mountain View. The seven-year construction process that completed the freeway was significantly disruptive to surrounding communities — residents were relocated, neighborhoods were bisected, and a 30-mile swath of the county was affected daily by the dust, noise, and displacement associated with construction.

PRxDigital served as the community interface between neighborhoods and construction crews, effectively representing the County. Our team fanned out to neighborhoods and business districts, preparing them for the work to come, identifying potential issues, and establishing ourselves as points of contact to ensure timely responsiveness.

Strategies & Tactics

PRx Digital planned and implemented our efforts community-by-community, moving our work ahead of the actual construction, all along the 30-mile route.
We coordinated community meetings and presentations and worked with both community groups and individual residents to resolve specific issues.
We visited schools, talking to students about construction-site safety.
We developed an award-winning brochure, “How to Build a Freeway,” that teachers could use in their curriculum.
The PRxDigital team also established and staffed neighborhood “field offices,” creating a base for our community outreach.
To complement and support the in-person outreach, we created and coordinated the publication and distribution of newsletters, brochures, press kits, and press releases, as part of a seven-year news outreach process.
As work progressed, we marked the completion of various projects – new intersections, small freeway segments – with festive ceremonies in local neighborhoods.
The opening of the freeway in 1994 was celebrated by a series of parties all along the newly constructed freeway, with full neighborthood celebrations taking place for the day before it opened to traffic.

Results

PRxDigital’s comprehensive outreach planning and execution engaged the public in all phases of construction, providing the means by which residents and commuters could communicate their concerns and see proof that those concerns were heard and acknowledged.
This strategy effectively averted opposition and delay-causing lawsuits.
The community celebration for the project completion drew more than 100,000 people as well as major local and national publicity.