The four freeways that are providing the economic lifeblood of the South County  — Interstate 205, the 120 Bypass, Interstate 5, and Highway 99 — are the subject of three workshops designed to gather community input on plans for improvements to address congestion.

The San Joaquin Council of Governments is conducting the workshops next week to seek input from the public on the four corridors.

The workshops are:

Tuesday, Sept. 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Manteca Transit Center, 220 Moffat Blvd., in Manteca.

Thursday, Sept. 12, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Tracy Transit Center, 50 East Sixth St., in Tracy.

Saturday, Sept. 14, from 10 a.m. until noon at the Mountain House Community Services board room, 230 Sterling Drive Suite 100, in Mountain House.

The workshops will delineate planned improvement projects. They are an opportunity to not only comment on the proposed endeavors but to make suggestions on addressing congestion as well.

The input will be used to help shape a comprehensive multimodal study assessing conditions along the four corridors and projected future growth impacts.

The goal is to have a plan to put improvements in place to enhance safety, reduce congestion, improve accessibility, spur economic development, as well as to improve air quality.

Besides addressing freeways per se, it will touch on parallel passenger rail service, bus transit as well as improvements to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians where it makes sense.

COG is already party to an effort that will extend Altamont Corridor Express service to Ceres by 2023 with stops as well in Modesto, Ripon, and downtown Manteca. Other ACE projects include improving the tracks across the Altamont Pass to reduce train travel time to the Bay Area.

There is also a effort underway to create the Valley Link system employing short sets of electric trains to initially connect River Islands at Lathrop — with stops in Tracy and Livermore — with the BART station in Dublin/Pleasanton.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com