It’s just a drawing — for now.

But one of the latest proposed truck route maps being vetted will make Manteca unique among Northern San Joaquin Valley communities. If implemented it would make all or part of every major corridor whether they are north-south or east-west official truck routes. It would also do the same for interchanges not built and corridors in their infancy of being developed such as McKinkey Avenue and Roth Road.

As such it means every single Manteca resident has a stake in what the city ends up doing on paper and whether they have the means — or the will — to implement it via investments  needed to accommodate legal truck movements on such routes or enforce rules restricting where trucks can go and what they can do.

Currently there are only a handful of routes in Manteca where it is legal for trucks not making local deliveries to use. They include Lathrop Road, Moffat Boulevard, and the Yosemite-Spreckels-Industrial Park Drive-Main loop from Highway 99 to the 120 Bypass.

The starting point to address various trucking related issues is to have a citywide truck route plan than makes sense.

When Manteca’s truck route study was commissioned for $150,000 it was supposed to be a six-month process.

It was promised as the cornerstone document needed to make it easier for truckers to maneuver around Manteca and to prevent the growing presence of trucks from trashing the quality of life, imperiling street safety, and destroying pavement of streets that weren’t built to bear truck weights.

Today, 39 months later and after spending enough tax dollars to install more than 6,000 no truck parking signs or modify 30 or so intersections to prevent turning trucks from taking out traffic signals and crushing curbing Manteca still doesn’t gave a holistic game plan when it comes to truck movements.

Now the city has decided to wait on another truck study — this time by the San Joaquin Council of Governments — before they start addressing rapidly multiply concerns about trucks and the impact they are having on the quality of life in Manteca.

Judging  by at least one proposed truck route map being floated — and should the city embrace it — Manteca could soon say it is OK to send trucks down Yosemite Avenue and then Union Road ti reach the 120 Bypass, down Louise Avenue to Main Street and then north on Main Street to reach Highway 99, past Great Wolf resort on Daniels Street, down Main Street south of the 120 Bypass and along Atherton Drive between Airport Way and Main Street as well as other corridors where truck traffic is not now legally allowed.

Couple that with apparent plans to make the entire Airport Way corridor a truck route, and it appears the city is willing to turn all or part of every major north-south city street and every east-west corridor into a truck route.

Keep in mind trucks making local deliveries to stores and such are allowed to go off truck routes.

Manteca’s leadership over the years has created an impossible situation.

They have worked to entice distribution centers and industrial uses along the Airport Way corridor that accesses the rapidly growing Union Pacific intermodal operation wedged in the county’s jurisdiction between the cities of Lathrop and Manteca.

The city’s motivation is primarily for local jobs and a stronger tax base. Major truck movement areas in Tracy that are on the eastern and western flanks of that city essentially have their own dedicated interchanges such as McArthur in Interstate 205. In Stockton Arch Road connects that city’s heavy business park concentration to Interstate 5 and Highway 99. Manteca’s Airport Way push has no corridor virtually dedicated to truck movements.

Compounding matters are commercial and residential developments that preceded business parks including the 1,410-home Del Webb retirement community that the city now needs to run trucks past.

It also hasn’t helped that apparently Manteca may have assumed truck traffic they generate could simply be dumped onto Lathrop Streets to reach Interstate 5. That is a two-way street of sorts as trucks heading to and from Lathrop-based distribution centers such as Raley’s accessing Super Store Industries have been spotted heading west from Highway 99 on Lathrop Road through Manteca.

Added to that mix was the county’s authorization that intermodal loading of up to 3,561 trailers a day — almost 2½ times more than what is now happening, can take place from the Union Pacific Railroad facility on Roth Road.

The city initially was going to adopt an updated citywide truck route plan as an independent decision. They then tied it into approval of the general plan update.

Now the city has split the truck route update from the general plan update.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabuletin.com