Money PG&E has set aside from what ratepayers have been paying since 1967 is fast tracking a Manteca street widening project.
The city, which was allocated $4.6 million under Rule 20 adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission, faces a looming deadline to use the money or lose it to another jurisdiction.
The Rule 20 funds are specifically to help local jurisdictions to cover the cost of undergrounding funding power lines.
The city has made widening Airport Way from Wawona Street to Yosemite Avenue at least to two travel lanes initially with a continuous center turn lane a top priority.
That’s because there are lines of power poles on both sides that would have to be set back.
If the poles were simply moved back farther to ultimately allow Airport Way to ultimately have four travel lanes, the cost would be 100 percent borne by the city.
But if the lines are placed underground, the $4.6 million could be used to help cover the cost.
Relocating power lines can be an expensive proposition.
It cost the city almost $2 million to relocate the power poles crossing the 120 Bypass when the current Union Road interchange started construction six years ago.
While that was a tad more problematic as it required steel poles and spanning the 120 Bypass, any time power poles are moved it is a costly item.
The relocation of power poles on segments where Airport Way has been widened when development occurs has been 100 percent the responsibility of developers.
There are too many small parcels between Wawona Street and Yosemite Avenue to ever see the private sector widen the stretch in a timely manner even if it was on a piecemeal basis.
The city is exploring an option that allows at least the initial ‘three lanes” — a travel lane in each directing and the middle turn lane — to be constructed in the near future to reduce the city’s cost to widen the corridor ultimately to four lanes using the $4.6 million in Rule 20 set aside funding.
The remaining additional travel lanes could be added at the same time but it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get the current landowners committed to paying for it.
What the county’s portion of the Airport Way corridor will look like in the future is the subject of an initial community workshop on Thursday, Feb. 12, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
The workshop takes place at the Cornerstone Community Church, 10948 South Airport Way.
The only segment of Airport Way currently within county jurisdiction destined to remain a two-lane road is south from where it will cross the pending extension of a dry levee to protect Manteca from a 200-year flood event to the San Joaquin River bridge.
In Manteca, though, it will be at least four lanes — with six lanes between Atherton Drive and Daniels Street.
That also includes converting the existing 120 Bypass overcrossing into a four-lane diverging diamond interchange similar to what is now in place at Union Road.
Manteca already has started initial design work for Airport Way diverging diamond as well as another to follow on Main Street.
200-year flood plain takes
away pressure for Airport
widening south of Manteca
The widening to four lanes of much of the remaining Airport Way corridor through Manteca is occurring when development takes place so that it is not on the taxpayers’ dime.
The reason development of any measurable degree will not occur along the Airport Way corridor from the future dry levee to the river is simple.
State law after 2030 prohibits development in designated 200-year flood plain unless adequate protection is in place or is physically in the process of taking place.
After that, the footprint of existing buildings — residential or otherwise — can’ be expanded.
The only new construction that can occur has to be elevated out of the floodplain.
The most likely way to do that is by creating earthen mounds to build homes and such on so they are above the 200-year water line.
It is not clear if such prohibitions extend to widening roadways that are within a 200-year flood zone.
Part of Airport Way just north of the San Joaquin River, is already built on a mound that raises it out of the100-year floodplain.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
