There is an off-road route on the West side of Morgan Hill that I enjoy. It serves as a shortcut, and I’ve always wondered why there was this undeveloped corridor in a pretty prime real estate area. I just found out why. It turns our the land was set aside for the “Hale Avenue Extension“. The city had planned this for quite some time but only now got the funding.

It makes sense, traffic-wise. Hale Ave. is a major road coming down from the North that people use as a back way to commute. But it ends at Main, in a T-intersection, which makes people trying to get to the southwest end of town clog up other local streets, including downtown. The extenstion will help with that. But I’ll still miss my little off-road route. Hopefully, due to our complete streets policy, it will have good bike lanes, as does the existing part of Hale Ave.