Traveling between Manteca and Ripon from midnight to 5 a.m. Dec. 22-29 is going to be a tad complicated.

Another closure is on tap for putting the replacement four-lane overpass for Austin Road in place forcing the temporary shutdowns of Highway 99.

There is probably a school of thought among many that it’s just another interchange project.

Nothing could be farther from the truth whether you live in Manteca or Ripon.

The overpass that will also clear the Union Pacific tracks is a major game changer.

It will effectively open southeast Manteca to mega-development as well as help spur growth on the city’s eastern flank up to East Highway 99/East Yosemite Avenue and further north.

But it will end up doing much more than that.

That’s because based on approved zoning that was designed to accommodate a 1,080-acre project, it will likely open the door for nearly another 2,000 students to fill classrooms in the Ripon Unified School District.

More than 40 percent of the residential zoning for what was dubbed the Austin Road Business Park within the Manteca City limits is also within the boundaries of the Ripon Unified School District.

There are 3,404 students enrolled currently in the Ripon Unified School District. Less than 4 percent are Manteca City residents.

That percentage will start growing within the next five years regardless of whether the business park project that has been on ice for a decade takes a while to start moving forward in response to the growth-inducing nature of the new interchange.

That’s because the biggest housing project within the boundaries of the Ripon school district is the 738-home Hat Ranch subdivision that has been approved by the City of Manteca.

It is in addition to a pair of farmland-to-homes endeavors to the south and east of Hat Ranch that national builders have submitted to Manteca that would add 502 homes near the Sedan and Alice avenues intersection.

Those three envisioned neighborhoods have the potential to add 500 or so new students to Ripon Unified.

Keep in mind there is also other land set aside for residential development in southeast Manteca that would also add students to Ripon.

It is not a wild assumption to predict within 10 years or so of the Austin Road interchange being completed in mid-2026 that 20 percent of the enrollment of Ripon Unified School District students will have city addresses in Manteca.

Eventually, the Ripon district plans to build an elementary school at Hat Ranch about three quarters of a mile from Manteca Unified’s Woodward School campus.

But it is going to be a long time before there are enough elementary-aged school students in Manteca for Ripon to justify building a TK-8 campus.

In the meantime, hundreds upon hundreds of students residing in Manteca will be attending elementary schools in Ripon Unified.

The Clift’s Notes for the outlook for Ripon High is different.

Ripon is a long way from building a second high school campus.

That means high school students from Manteca will start posing significant classroom space needs for Ripon High.

Based simply on the four above-mentioned residential projects, that could eventually translate into 400 or so Ripon High students with Manteca City addresses.

It likely will take 20 years or so to get to that point.

But then again, growth in Manteca has managed to outpace projections consistently for the past two decades.

Regardless, thanks to the Austin Road project to a large degree that opens up access for southeast Manteca, the odds are high that Ripon Unified will start feeling the “Manteca squeeze”, if you will, in less than a decade.

The impacts on Ripon go way beyond schools.

For starters, the fact Manteca families have students at schools within Ripon will likely be a boon to businesses within Ripon.

Manteca’s experience with the early years of the Weston Ranch neighborhood in southwest Stockton that is within the Manteca Unified boundaries reflects such an outcome.

High school students from Weston Ranch went to East Union High in Manteca for more than 12 years accounting for, at one point, nearly 400 students or more than a quarter of the student body.

A number of those families shopped and dined in Manteca given how family life tends to center around schools for much of a year.

The ranks of youth sports teams and such swelled as well.

The impact on the City of Manteca, with its current population of 95,000 as opposed to Ripon at 16,000, will be larger.

That said, for good or bad, Ripon will feel a more intense effect whether it is on schools, business, or community life.

And while Ripon is not positioned quite the same as Manteca when it comes to infrastructure such as water and sewer, the new Austin Road interchange is likely to put growth pressure on the City of Ripon itself.

If clearly will be far less than the idea of an Olive Avenue/Highway 99 interchange floated in the late 1990s to tie in with a possible second Stanislaus River crossing that fizzled.

Nor will the impact even reach the level of the Raymus Expressway interchange Manteca has toyed with a mile south of Austin Road on Highway 99 and a mile north of the envisioned Olive Avenue interchange.

But there will be a residual effect.

None of what may happen after the ribbon cutting for the new Austin Road interchange takes place eight months of so from now is preordained.

But given the Manteca track record for growth, Austin Road when it comes to home, business park, and even commercial growth seems destined to replicate the transformation of Airport Way on the city’s west side.

And when it does, Ripon will feel the direct — and indirect — effects.

 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