Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

After reading the Manteca Bulletin article about 500 vehicles coming into Ripon in the afternoon to get around the 120 Bypass mess and the Highway 99 slow down I thought about what our forefathers had planned. Fifteen to twenty years ago they saw this coming. 

They created and built Doak Road as a truck route since they didn’t want trucks coming through the middle of town. Doak was meant to extend straight west to Austin Road, therefore traffic and trucks would skirt around the town. Along with this idea, they were thinking about having South Olive extend and cross the river.

I think it was a great idea, but it was lost. There were roundabouts put in and nobody thought ahead. So now we Riponites have to deal with it.

Dean Meeuwse 

Ripon