There are, according to the Keep America Beautiful organization, roughly 9.7 billion cigarette butts discarded on any given day in the United States.

Rest assured not one of them made their way into the cigarette receptacle that has been at the Manteca Transit Center for more than two years.

It was put in place by the city to support the Cigarette Litter Prevention Program.

It’s a program that is now in its 21st year nationally.

There is little doubt smokers littering to dispose of their cigarette butts is a real problem.

In 2020, Keep America Beautiful commissioned a study that determined nationally that 9 out of every 10 pieces of litter was less than 4 inches.

And of the litter 4 inches or smaller, 88 percent were cigarette butts.

It begs the question how they came to that determination, but cigarette butt litter is a real problem.

Such receptacles are recommended for high traffic areas that transition into places where people aren’t supposed to smoke such as public parks, beaches, and hospitals.

Some 1,800 communities nationwide, which includes Manteca, have obtained and installed cigarette receptacles. 

The Manteca Transit Center receptacle was placed adjacent to the northern end of the solar panel canopy in the parking lot along the Tidewater Bikeway next to the parking stall reserved for charging Manteca Transit’s electric vans.

It’s not in a location that is high profile. It’s a way from the foot traffic the transit center gets when there are gatherings in the community room.

It isn’t anywhere near the benches and bus loading areas.

About the only traffic that passes the receptacle are walkers, joggers, and bicyclists that aren’t likely to be puffing away.

In all fairness, someone at city hall not familiar with Manteca — I’m not being funny — probably thought train tracks plus transit station equals passengers going by the spot it was installed.

When the trains do come, they will stop farther down the line more toward Manteca High and none of the ACE passengers will ever likely step into the transit center building.

Effective placement of amenities requires knowing the lay of the land, so to speak, and an understanding of the quirks of day-in and day-out flow of people that don’t always mimic textbook examples.

There was an incident a few years back at a community meeting when people very familiar with a section of downtown were perplexed about a traffic solution being advanced.

After an even-keeled back and forth, the staff member conceded he had never looked at the location in question but had Googled it.

Nothing beats real life and real time looks at areas.

The staff member was relatively new and was into tech.

The city has since made sure Google map/visual programs going forward are used by staff as simply a tool to augment and not supplant on-site inspections.

And the city has also methodically stepped up efforts to seek input from the community even more robust than in the past. That said, they can’t be blamed when people don’t step up and let their views be known before the end of decision making processes.

There is a real danger in not knowing the daily quirks of people in specific areas when the bureaucracy makes decisions regarding the placement of amenities.

The best example of how bad things can end up being was the 1998 decision by Caltrans to invest $300,000 plus into a park and ride commuter lot on the northeast side of the Austin Road interchange when Highway 99 was widened to six lanes between Manteca and Ripon.

The premise was good, just like with the receptacles for cigarette butts.

But instead of trying to reduce litter, the state’s goal was to entice people to ride share to reduce freeway commute congestion.

The park and ride share lot was a complete dud.

In the first few weeks, if the lot was used, there was only two cars at the most.

It didn’t take long for the criminal element to discover people were leaving cars parked for hours in a fairly isolated lot with minimal traffic at the time.

All it took was a week or so of cars left there getting shattered windows while owners shared rides with someone else, to cement the reputation of the commuter lot as being a high risk option.

Then people started dumping garbage there or setting up house using their vehicles as the main shelter.

That led to Caltrans after three years barricading access to the lot using concrete K-rail.

This queues up a soon-to-come process that Manteca will be undertaking as to where the next skate park will go.

You may not know it, but there is a skate park in Manteca.

The city back in the mid-1990s couldn’t have found a worst location.

That’s because they made a concerted effort to actually find the worst location possible.

It backed up to train tracks with no safety fence in place for years.

It wasn’t just hundreds of yards from the nearest street, but it was situated so you couldn’t see it from the street.

And if being next to the PG&E substation along the Tidewater wasn’t enough to create a welcoming ambiance and a place where parents would be comfortable for kids to go, the city picked the most barren land they could where weeds even struggle to grow.

Of course, they promised to plant trees and grass, but that never happened.

The council majority back then listened to those who didn’t want a skate park or skaters in Manteca.

They didn’t listen to the ones that wanted it.

And the voices they ignored weren’t those of just skaters.

They were parents that wanted a safe and easily accessible area and even grandparents or retirees who mentioned how they enjoyed watching skaters do tricks and such as skate parks in cities they visited that were placed in high profile locations.

The city would be hard pressed to repeat the dysfunctional process that led to the current skate park being located a hike and a half away from the intersection of Center and Elm streets.

Even so, the city needs to enlist the community first about where a skate park should go before even talking about what it may entail.

You can have the world’s greatest skate park design, but if it is in a less-than-optimum location it will be under-utilized.

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