What came first: The chicken places or bad Manteca municipal planning?
It is a question anyone foolhardy enough to try and navigate the main entrance to the city on any given Saturday on Yosemite Avenue asks.
This past Saturday thanks to the opening of Raising Cane’s — the fourth chain fast food chicken joint or six if you toss in Wingstop and Fire Wings to the mix that includes KFC, Chick-fil-A, and El Pollo Loco in a two block stretch — East Yosemite Avenue for long stretches of time became a parking lot.
*The southbound off ramp to Yosemite Avenue on Highway 99 was backed up to the right hand freeway lane.
*Traffic trying to head east toward Escalon on the same off ramp was impeded from turning left on a green light due to vehicles blocking the intersection.
*The usual Chick-fil-A drive thru line commandeered the right hand lane of westbound Yosemite as part of its queue almost all the way back to Black Bear diner.
*Traffic turning west from the northbound Highway 99 off-ramp often couldn’t clear the signal in one cycle.
*The westbound stretch of East Yosemite in front of the Best Western was jammed with non-moving vehicles.
*People trying to head west on Yosemite we’re doing nutty things such as making illegal right hand turns from the center off-ramp lane and thru traffic jetting through the intersection from one of the two left turn lanes to Highway 99 to try and wedge in front of backed up traffic blocking the intersection.
*Northwoods Drive was again used to fatten Chick-fil-A’s profits at the expense of nearby residents and businesses.
*Raising Cane’s for long periods of time was jamming the curbside westbound lane for long stretches as people snaked around the corner at Cottage and Yosemite to access a temporary drive thru entrance from Cottage Court.
One can only imagine how much worse things would have been on Saturday if the last-minute Cottage Court drive thru entrance for Raising Cane’s via Cottage Court wasn’t in place and if Manteca Police didn’t assign a patrol unit to the area to prevent Raising Cane’s from completely paralyzing traffic movement.
It is clear by the folks at city hall who have the authority to do something about the situation simply don’t care or else they are grossly incompetent — take your pick.
Since those that would be in a position to do so something do not live in Manteca and certainly don’t shop or work here on weekends when traffic goes completely mad in the city, they blow off any outrage and simply wait for people to become worn down and accept the bad decisions city hall keeps compounding after each new wave of saviors arrive at 1001 West Center Street to collect fat paychecks and then move on to their next municipality to victimize.
No harm, right? People can wait.
Say that to someone in an ambulance or being driven in a car that needs to get to the Doctors Hospital emergency room from Escalon, Ripon, or areas in Manteca east of Highway 99. It is now clear Saturdays from here on out seriously ill people or those who lives are in danger due to an accident will have their lives put in a queue behind people with a hankering for chicken.
That’s because the two quickest routes heading west on Yosemite Avenue to the Doctors Hospital ER — Northwoods Avenue to North Street and Cottage Avenue to North Street — from the previously mentioned areas have points that are often curb to curb parking lots throughout Saturdays since Chick-fil-A opened.
What Manteca needs to first and foremost is for the city never to hire Fehr and Peers to conduct another traffic study again in the City of Manteca. A lot of traffic “oops” in Manteca are based on the consulting firm’s modeling used to justify development based on it not creating detrimental traffic issues. Both the Chick-fil-A and Raising Cane’s projects were essentially blessed by the consulting firm’s number crunching.
When community members who are lay people when it comes to traffic issues who serve as planning commission members questioned assumptions the consultants made they received semi-condescending replies. Models don’t lie. And they are the experts.
Sometimes they made assumptions that were flat out wrong.
The real fun with Raising Cane’s will start in the coming months.
It will center around the consultant’s feeble recommendations to prevent problematic left turns out of Raising Cane’s so close to the Yosemite/Cottage/Spreckels intersection.
Instead of recommending a raised concrete divider on Yosemite which would have cost the fast food joint more money, Fehr & Peer’s simply recommended posting a non-left turn lane sign at the western most driveway.
A consultant responded to a planning commissioner who questioned the adequacy of such a recommendation by saying those exiting could simply make a U-turn at the Spreckels/Cottage intersection to head back east on Yosemite.
There’s one little problem with that. The intersection is posted for no U-turn as is every Yosemite Avenue intersection with traffic signals from the west side of Highway 99 to Airport Way[1] .
After rendering verdicts on traffic impacts for more than two decades on Manteca development projects, you’d think they would at least bother to drive the streets of the city with their eyes open.
The big deal about the no left turn from Raising Cane’s harkens back to the days when the site was home to McDonald’s.
As often as twice a month people would get into fender benders and occasionally T-bone accidents from turning left out of McDonald’s
The reasons varied. They misjudged the flow of traffic. The crest of the pavement and the middle of the street striping are not one in the same. There are issues with the sun blinding drivers. And the big one — people moving in and out of the continuous center turn lane.
None of this concerns city hall.
They’ve made it clear where they stand on traffic flow and the motoring public’s safety after successfully sabotaging the bid to widen Main Street to four lanes through downtown so businesses can profit at the expense of everyone else.
Chicken matters as does the wild-eye dream of sipping $6 lattes curbside in the 100 block of North Main Street. The people who live here and have to travel Manteca’s streets day in and day out — they don’t matter as much.
Manteca not only as an El Pollo Loco on East Yosemite but we also have El Burocria Loco at 1001 West Center Street.
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
