The shake and rattle days on Airport Way between Woodward Avenue and Tactical 5.11 Drive are numbered.
The Manteca City Council on Tuesday authorized bids for a $2.7 million stop-gap measure to upgrade the worst sections of the one-time county road that less than 15 years became a full-scale arterial as Manteca grew.
If all goes according to plan work will start this summer and be finished in the fall.
Due to the cost of upgrading the entire roadway to give it new life as well as make essential widening of Airport Way that has been placed in excess of $20 million and that’s without interchange improvements at the 120 Bypass, the city opted to go with work that will make the pavement drivable sooner than later.
The result, however, will be a patchwork of upgrades.
The work will address potholes and cracking where pavement is approaching failure. Those areas will be dug out, compacted and a 2-inch surface placed on them.
When the project was being designed, staff said “it won’t look pretty” but the driving surface will be upgraded significantly.
There are areas where in the next year developers on their dime will be replacing existing road sections to the middle line.
“This is just a repair and not a reconstruction,” Mayor Ben Cantu emphasized.
Councilman Charlie Halford — along with other council members — lauded the city staff finally moving the project forward.
Halford pointed out that there are issues with segments of Lathrop Road and Louise Avenue as well as other streets in Manteca that are just as bad if not worse than some segments of Airport Way. Most of the streets where that is the case are streets that were county roads just two to three decades ago but are now carrying heavy urban traffic with a lot of semi-trucks in the mix.
Attached to the Airport Way project bid is work to rebuild the parking lot at Library Park. The cost of that project that includes addressing drainage, new pavement, and American with Disabilities upgrades is pegged at $115,000.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
