Drive through downtown.

Go ahead.

A lot of people do.

And I mean a lot.

If you doubt that, stand on the corner of Main Street and Yosemite Avenue for a spell.

Rest assured the $980,000 consultant the city hired to lead downtown out of its supposed wilderness and into the 21century retail, dining, and entertainment economy won’t.

They’ve got Google Maps, artificial intelligence, textbook planning, and years of experience dazzling a dozen or so enthralled community members at various workshops with their whiteboards, push pins, planning exercises, and professional thinking of regurgitating every want and desire communities, businesses, and elected officials have ever had.

If you stand at the intersection for an hour, you will realize 99 percent plus of all traffic on Main Street and Yosemite Avenue isn’t going downtown.

It’s going through downtown.

An unless Manteca has billions of dollars at its disposal to put the train tracks that move more than 40 trains a day through downtown into a trench as well as take out probably several hundred homes to create bypasses of downtown for both east-west as well as north-south traffic 99 plus percent of traffic will always likely pass through downtown.

And before we’ve finished pounding that point into the ground — and hopefully into the heads of the consulting team benefitting from the $980,000 check the city is writing to avoid them recommending a round fantasy peg to jam into the square of reality, let’s revisit the bold statement — actually a lie — of the last downtown consultant that addressed traffic.

It was roughly a quarter of century ago they told Mantecans, as if they were simpleton country bumpkins that can’t trust what they see day in and day out, that 90 percent of the cars using Main Street were headed to a downtown destination and not through downtown.

They also recommended Manteca slow the traffic down on Main Street — essentially back it up more — so people stopped in traffic can gaze into store windows and see what they are missing.

They’d likely be missing displays in store windows.

That is how the city bought into the bulb-outs in the 100 block of North Main and for the council to back down on their insistance the street be four lanes

The same bulb-outs the city removed to avoid being tarred and feathered.

Main Street is a viable and critical arterial. It will always be a viable and critical arterial based on how the city is laid out and grown.

In every other city around here — as well as Pleasanton and Livermore that a lot of people seem to believe have the cat’s meow of revitalized downtowns — growth has left downtowns to the side of cities.

In Manteca, growth has taken place in all four directions from downtown and continues to do so.

As such, downtown is basically still in the center of Manteca.

Why this matters is simple.

It needs to be made clear Main Street cannot be subservient to the downtown plan.

If the consultant knows that from the start, then the plan they come up with will be viable and worth the money spent.

How can such a statement be made?

Easy. In the last 25 to 30 years elected councils three times made decisions to send four lanes of Main Streets through downtown on North Main Street.

And each time they were browbeaten to reverse their decision.

Once it was by consultants working with a handful of North Manteca business owners that have long left the corridor that said the lack of parking would kill their business.

And twice it was by city hall staff.

The bureaucrats will disagree but not everyone has short memories.

The first time it was a community development director at every turn once the council said make it four lanes tried to undermine the direction the council gave.

He went as far as talking up Main Street to be two lanes with diagonal parking as far north as Louise Avenue.

The other time was when staff set a Manteca record for foot-dragging when it took them 21 months to come back with a plan to four lane traffic through the downtown corridor without widening the street.

Between the time they gave a drive-by cost estimate and came up with a preliminary cost estimate, the price tag soared by over $1 million.

There is an inherent danger with work starting in earnest on the downtown improvement plan without the council first making a policy decision on North Main Street.

And it does behind reality and past history.

*Logic dictates if Ascend is charged with coming up with the best plan for downtown without a parameter regarding how traffic is handled, North Street will play second fiddle.

*The council adopted general plan not only designated downtown as a special planning area but indicates Main Street traffic levels are acceptable at the “D” level, which is planning jargon shorthand for atrocious.

*Mayor Gary Singh has made it clear where he stands and so has several other council members.

*It does nobody any good if a plan is advanced to the council with North Main remaining two lanes and the council then rejects it.

That’s because Ascend will  have based their entire downtown on the vision that keeps Main Street two lanes.

A four-lane Main Street doesn’t put the kibosh on a vision to create a gathering place on the northwest corner of Yosemite Main where the city is spending $1.2 million to buy the IOOF Hall and the adjoining parking lot.

But knowing the council wants it to be four lanes will affect the design of not just that space, but how the 100, 200, and 300 blocks of North Main can be transformed as well as the 100 and 200 blocks of South Main.

To be honest, the $980,000 plan covering every aspect of a blueprint for the direction of downtown in the coming decades as well as a blanket environmental study to reduce red tape for private sector endeavors to turn it into a reality is needed.

But you might as well transfer the $980,000 to a Nigerian bank account if the elected city leaders at the start of Ascend’s work do not make the decision on whether North Main Street will be two or four lanes.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com