It’ll provide a lifetime of convenience by ensuring that drivers won’t ever have to stop at a train again on Lathrop Road. 

But it’ll take a little bit of sacrifice to get there. 

Last week the Lathrop City Council gave its blessing for a plan that will close a section of Lathrop Road for a four-day stretch and a much wider expanse of McKinley Avenue for a week while a roadway realignment is carried out as one of the final pieces of the Lathrop Road westerly grade separation project – the second bridge of its kind on the thoroughfare. 

According to the plan, Lathrop Road will be closed at Woodfield Drive and 5th Street starting at 10 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 14 through 5 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 17. Once the road reopens, it will be over the new bridge section that was just recently completed and has been under construction for nearly a year. 

Once the new traffic pattern is aligned, traffic on McKinley Avenue near where it intersects with Lathrop Road will be rerouted because of extensive work expected to take the following week. Crews will be making changes to the roadway elevation as it approaches the new section, and the new approach will have to align with the new roadway and the yet-to-be-completed surface street that won’t be built until the final phase. 

The cost of the project is being paid for by funds from the San Joaquin Council of Governments – which operates on a half-cent transportation sales-tax initiative in the county – as well as local, state and federal transportation monies.