The issue of whether Main Street should be four lanes through downtown Manteca may be debated and decided again for the fourth time since 2006 after a $67,000 study is conducted to determine how effective synchronizing traffic signals might be.

Based on comments made Tuesday Manteca Mayor Ben Cantu now wants to see the corridor widened to four lanes without waiting until 2023 or later when a proposed $500,000 to $800,000 downtown specific plan is completed.

The one thing that will happen for sure based on Tuesday’s meeting is the city will soon have another study in its hands. This time it is a $67,000 study staff has already awarded to see whether synchronizing traffic signals along Main Street at Moffat, Yosemite, Center, North and Alameda would improve traffic flow.

That study is expected to be completed by January.

Councilman Charlie Halford questioned why staff didn’t include the Wetmore Street signal as well given if it wasn’t synchronized it could impair traffic flows  on southbound Main potentially creating issues with backups at Moffat.

Staff replied the consultant had already collected data and they weren’t too sure Wetmore could be included.

The council was assured the synchronization study was needed regardless as a precursor to better traffic movements whether the corridor remains two lanes or goes to four lanes as completed plans that had been prepared already to go out to bid.

That said staff did not point out there were costs associated with synchronizing beyond the need for updated controllers that would have to reoccur if the city ended up going with synchronized signals for the current lane configuration early next year and then a year or so later went with the four-lane plan. The costs are in sensor loops in the pavement that would have to be removed and replaced when lanes are added and existing lanes.

Cantu was pushing to go ahead with the four-lane plan now instead of later. To some, that seemed like a flip flop from seven months ago.

Erias concerns about downtown

led to council pausing from going

to bid in Main Street widening plan

Back in April just as the council was preparing to go to bid to use pavers from Yosemite Avenue to Alameda Street to accommodate four lanes of traffic and a turn lane without cutting into sidewalks, Cantu was persuaded by Community Development Services Chris Erias to cast a vote to pause moving the project forward by dangling the promise of a downtown specific plan in front of Cantu that he has sought for years.

Cantu was joined by Jose Nuño who wanted traffic addressed on Main Street but was willing to take a second look and councilman Dave Breitenbucher who balked at the $4 million price tag and argued the money should be dumped into the Airport Way corridor instead.

Cantu, based on public comments since being elected, has always pushed for a specific downtown plan. But he has also made it clear the corridor that was best suited to be more pedestrian friendly with wider sidewalks and therefore less car-centric was Yosemite Avenue.

That is due in part to the greater concentration of older buildings with older appealing architecture and the ability to move east-east traffic off the Yosemite corridor by sending through traffic on a connector road to Moffat without sending it through nearby residential neighborhoods.

To avoid doing that on Main based on the spacing of railroad crossings trying to make driving as inconvenient to use the Main Street corridor to pass through downtown it would require motorists to go a mile out of their way to get through the central part of the city and then drive an additional mile to reach commercial areas on both ends on Main Street.

Both council members Gary Singh and Charlie Halford were ready in April to go forward with a holistic plan that would have pavers near the curb packed in sand to allow storm runoff that sometimes overwhelms the corridor’s storm system during heavy downpours to permeate into the ground.

Why city engineers said

pavers would be cost effective

City engineers indicated it would cost less using pavers as it would avoid the need to tear out the concrete poured for the original Highway 99 in the 1920s that is now buried under multiple layers of asphalt in order to upgrade the driving surface.

Given pavers need such a concrete base the cost to use pavers which are typically more expensive than asphalt penciled out less than digging up the road and putting in a new base.

When wedded with the longer life of the pavers and the ability to simply remove them and replace them when doing utility work instead of cutting into pavement and then covering it with patches of asphalt, the short- and long-term costs were determined by staff to be more cost effective.

Because having pavers eliminated the need for gutters additional traffic lanes could be placed in the 100, 200 and 300 blocks of North Main without cutting into sidewalks as well as relocating street lights and traffic signals.

The council also saw the pavers not just as a way to improve the aesthetics of the corridor but to delineate when motorists were in the central district.

Erias in April shared his vision that Main Street all the way to Louise Avenue and perhaps beyond should eventually be reduced to two lanes and traffic signals replaced with roundabouts.