Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

This is in regards to columns you wrote about waiting for the trains to pass within the City of Manteca and your comments about the traffic situation in general in the area.

Let’s talk about the trains first. 

Let’s go back to the beginning before they redid all seven crossings within the city. Didn’t anyone in the city have any foresight to realize that according to an article in your newspaper they have an average of 37 trains pass through the city within a 24-hour period? Whether it’s true or not that’s a lot of trains. You would think someone in the city would say, we need to look at having some of the main crossings have the trains pass above the street like they do in Livermore or Pleasanton. The big problem is the emergency vehicles that must transit these crossings must wait also. If the city Fathers would had made the right decision earlier they would have had some of the main crossings go under the train tracks. If it was a case of life or death, I don’t believe you would want them to wait for any train to pass.

You mentioned about completely stopping at stop signs in general and making a right turn after a stop. You said that you hardly see that done anymore. I have to agree with you. You see very few motorists come to a full stop at a stop sign. Why is that? If the local police would start giving out tickets for failure to stop, the word would get out and more people would stop. I have lived primarily in the Bay Area since 1975. I moved out here about three years ago. I noticed, like your article said, that very few people stop at stop signs.

H. Latona  

Manteca