Is it six lanes to hell or eight lanes to paradise?
Talking to some Manteca commuters who used the I-205 corridor in 2008 and they will tell you they were happy it was widened to six lanes but believe it was not ludicrous to go ahead and widen it to eight lanes instead.
There’s was little doubt the freeway needed to be widened to six lanes due to traffic volume and safety concerns.
Going to eight lanes is logically sound, right? One must, after all, prepare for the future.
Shouldn’t we have erred on the side of caution and perhaps have taken out enough homes and businesses in 2008 to accommodate 10 or 12 lanes? Given population projections, you can’t have too many freeway lanes.
Most wouldn’t fault Caltrans for looking ahead. They would be merely plugging in numbers given them by planners into the standard California freeway formula.
It’s a classic California solution. People move out into the suburbs. The two-lane highway becomes crowded. They demand a four-lane freeway. More growth occurs farther out. Soon more people want a six-lane freeway. People move even farther out and now that six-lane freeway is an eight-lane freeway. If folks keep it up long enough, pretty soon 64-lane freeways will be the norm in California.
There’s got to be a limit to our madness.
Bank of America’s economists 16 years ago issued a white paper on California growth that essentially said extending infrastructure farther and farther out to accommodate more commuting population was sheer madness as it was overextending our resources. The very financial institution that helped bankroll much of California’s sprawl argued it made more sense to direct tax dollars and private sector money into inner cities.
This is now happening throughout the Bay Area on a large scale. San Jose has already been transformed.
Eventually, the same thing will happen in the blighted sections of valley towns such as Stockton and Modesto.
It is sheer lunacy to keep widening freeways beyond a certain point because it only encourages development patterns that abandon inner cities and takes growth farther and farther out.
One can’t stop growth. And yes, everyone has to live somewhere.
But building wider and wider freeways and converting what are today’s two-lane highways into four lanes just so people can move farther and farther away from the Bay Area and other employment centers isn’t exactly wise planning.
If population growth can justify a 10-lane freeway through Tracy in 20 years, then it probably could justify a light rail system.
Such a system could perhaps run parallel to Interstate 205 and up the Airport Way corridor. That would make makes sense especially if Stockton Metro Airport will indeed be a major employment center with 36,000 primary jobs by 2025.
Moving people by light rail between Turlock, Modesto, Ripon, Manteca, Stockton, Lodi, Galt and Sacramento may not seem reasonable now but 30 years from now it may well be the best answer.
The population numbers certainly will justify it. Manteca, with a reasonable 3.9 percent growth cap, could have 120,000 plus residents by 2030. The population potential for Modesto and Stockton would be staggering in comparison.
Since freeways in California are first and foremost dominated by commuters and then the shipping of goods followed by shopping excursions and tourism, it would make sense to focus on a solution to accommodate as much of the commute movement as possible without having to keep expanding freeways for all of eternity.
Taking our “more-freeway-lanes-are-the-answer” argument to its ultimate absurd conclusion means our great-great-great-grand-kids will probably be waiting for the day when Interstate 205 is widened from 62 lanes to 64 lanes.
This column is the opinion of managing editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209-249-3519.
