If this summer’s least popular trend continues this weekend, then Los Gatos residents will be stuck in traffic–or stuck at home–as beach-goers once again flood the town with cut-through traffic. Last weekend, the extra police officers enforcing traffic laws and the electronic message boards that were set up at strategic intersections in town appeared to have little impact.

With messages reading “Downtown Traffic Only. Beach Traffic Use 17,” town officials had hoped the signs would encourage beach-goers to hop onto Highway 17 at Lark Avenue or Highway 9, but apparently that didn’t happen.

“It totally failed,” Kismet Boutique employee Kelly Kubo said. “I went to get lunch and the cars on N. Santa Cruz barely moved. Customers are telling us they’re avoiding town. I hear a lot of screeching tires at crosswalks.”

Three things have become apparent throughout the summer: Emergency responders will be hamstrung by the traffic if they need to get somewhere fast, downtown merchants are losing money fast and residents can’t get around in a timely fashion to do simple things like get a haircut.

Parks and public works director Matt Morley estimated that vehicles cutting through the Almond Grove neighborhood last weekend were approximately 400 feet deep on Tait Avenue and 200 feet deep on Massol Avenue.

Morley told the town council on Aug. 4 that “we added some cameras over the weekend where we were able to record what was happening at some key intersections and do some subsequent vehicle counts, so that will help educate us in the future as we look to long term solutions.”

The town is looking to Caltrans and the Valley Transportation Authority for help in finding long-term solutions. In fact, Morley was set to meet with Caltrans and VTA on Aug. 5. He’s meeting Aug. 7 with officials from Waze, the Google-owned company whose mobile navigation app is being partly blamed for sending beach traffic through town.

Waze communications director Julie Mossler said, “We alternate which routes are used, based on real-time conditions, to avoid generating congestion of our own. It simply wouldn’t be effective to route a large amount of Wazers off a highway and down the same surface street at once.” She added that Waze is constantly collecting data from drivers, so if going through town is slower than staying on the freeway, it wouldn’t be recommended.

It may be easy to blame technology, but longtime downtown business owner Ed Stahl points out that the beach traffic issue isn’t new. “This is something we’ve been cursed with,” Stahl said. “Prior to Highway 17, all the traffic came through town. There were five gas stations on N. Santa Cruz Avenue.”

Broadway resident Jim Hogan, who lives one block from the S. Santa Cruz entrance to Highway 17 said simply, “You can’t win this year.”

Many Los Gatos residents want that highway entrance closed on summer weekends, but Caltrans has been resisting proposals to do that. “We haven’t taken any options off the table,” interim town manager Les White said regarding the ramp.

Hogan, meantime, likes the fact that the town plans to continue using the message boards and thinks they should be used to warn traffic violators they’ll be cited.

Police Captain Mike D’Antonio said the citations issued last weekend were primarily given to people who were blocking intersections. He added, however, that sometimes a police presence ties up traffic even more because of “looky-loos.”

At this point, town officials say they’ll continue to plug away at the problem, but White warned “this doesn’t come without a price tag.”

The town is paying a consultant between $10,000 and $15,000 to make practical suggestions, plus there are extra staff costs, such as police and public works employee overtime. White estimated the town will spend between $20,000 and $30,000 through Labor Day.

White also advised patience saying, “There is no panacea here.”

Bay Area News Group writers Eric Kurhi and Sophie Mattson contributed to this story.