If you have issues with truck traffic in Manteca — especially where trucks may travel that are not making local deliveries — you have an opportunity to possibly impact where legal truck routes will be established.
But in order to do so the city needs your input.
The next opportunity to do just that is Thursday, Nov. 15, at 6 p.m. at the Manteca Transit Center, 220 Moffat Blvd., for the second citywide truck route study community workshop. Truck routes will be determined in part on public input received at the community workshop.
The City Council instructed staff to develop a citywide master plan for standard truck routes taking into the account the need to serve employment centers while striving to protect the quality of life of current and future residents. At the same time they want Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA) routes adopted that allows trucks that exceed California length limits to accommodate interstate trucking.
The city over the years has been criticized by both residents and truckers for not employing forward thinking when it comes to truck routes.
When Spreckels Park’s business park opened, the city did not take steps to designate a STAA route. A number of interstate trucking firms starting moving goods to and from distribution centers. At one point, the CHIP started ticketing trucks leaving Highway 99 to reach Spreckels Park distribution centers due to there being no STAA designated route.
There have also been issues raised by truckers that when the city did designate truck routes they sometimes fail to provide adequate clearance for right hand turns.
Residents along the Lathrop Road corridor contend they have seen an upswing in STAA trucks using Lathrop Road even though it is not a designated STAA route. They have shot smartphone video of STAA trucks on a standard truck route where trucks have gone over curbs making right turns because the turn radius was inadequate.
They also have said the city needs to map out where they intend to have truck routes — STAA and otherwise — so steps can be made to design corridors to maximum safety and minimize noise.
The city’s existing business parks that generate significant truck traffic are the Spreckels Park and Manteca Industrial Park that are tied together by the continuous flow of Spreckels Avenue into Industrial Park Drive that is connected to Highway 99 via Yosemite Avenue and the 120 Bypass via South Main Street.
Business Parks are also being developed along the Airport Way corridor between Roth Road and Louise Avenue. In additional land is zoned for a business park that can accommodate distribution centers in the 1,049-acre Austin Road annexation in southeast Manteca.
There is also the possibility229 acres previously approved for the building of 1,014 homes could instead be developed as a business park on land sandwiched between Airport Way and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks south of Louise Avenue and the Manteca Unified district office complex to take advantage of the boom for distribution centers.
For more information contact the Community Development Depart at (209) 456-8500.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
