Big rig truck drivers have found another short cut through Manteca.

And it’s on a street that’s:

*narrow for the most part

*not designed to accommodate their turn movements

*not built to withstand their weight

*the City of Manteca has essentially allowed to become a quasi-arterial for north-south traffic.

And the street — Cottage Avenue — already has prompted residents to demand the city do something to improve safety and reduce speeds.

Those issues include a half dozen crashes at Alameda Street and Cottage at the southern base foot of the Highway 99 overcrossing including one that seriously injured a driver since the 48-unit Cottage Village apartments for seniors opened in late 2020.

A gripe that’s been made for much longer and periodically is brought to the City Council’s attention with little impact is speeding and growing traffic volumes that make it difficult — and often unsafe — for those living along Cottage between Alameda and Pine Streets to use their driveways.

The latest safety issue has been growing in recent months.

William Fox — who has had a front row view to the worsening traffic problems since 1998 when he bought a home in the Creekside neighborhood on the corner pf Brookdale Way and Cottage Avenue — started pressing the city since September about the truck issue.
He estimates there are at least 15 big rigs a day that make their way down Cottage not to make local deliveries as allowed by law but to travel to and from distribution centers in Spreckels Park as well as the adjacent  Manteca Industrial Park.

The trucks often go the length of Cottage Avenue to Lathrop Road where they head west to reach Highway 99 to avoid the traffic tie-ups that often plaque East Yosemite Avenue.

It is a shortcut Fox believes truck drivers get via Internet-based sources such as Google Maps.

The most egregious incident to date involving a big rig was severely damaging a traffic signal as it was making a right turn from Louise Avenue to southbound Cottage. For months the pedestrian activation button was duct taped in place. It was replaced but damaged signals as well as a dented support pole are still visible.

Manteca has same number

of officers dedicated to

traffic safety  as they did

when population was 67K

The intersection was never designed to accommodate truck traffic.

Manteca Police have been in contact with Fox and have indicated when they are available they will have an officer check Cottage for illegal truck movements.

That, Fox noted, won’t cut it. He noted the police don’t have the manpower.

In fact back in 2010 when a speeder on Cottage lost control and slammed into a low masonry wall on the corner in front of his home with the Buick left hanging over the wall with wheels spinning, the Manteca Police traffic unit had five officers. That’s the same amount Manteca still has dedicated to traffic within its ranks of 72 sworn officers even though the city has grown by almost 25 percent since 2010 adding 20,000 residents.

The city also put in place signs on Cottage just after the Yosemite and Louise intersections advising that trucks weighing more than 4 tons are not allowed to travel through Manteca on non-designated truck routes.

It’s a placement that Fox finds more than puzzling.

“By the time they (truckers) see the sign they are already committed to going down Cottage,” Fox noted.

Fox said the signs would be more effective if they informed truckers before they turned onto Cottage of the weight limit.

Fox also said the signs “are lost” in placing near other signs such as the speed limit and also do not stick out to the point they are noticeable. It is a similar complaint residents of Del Webb have registered with the city in the past regarding trucks using non-truck route streets near their neighborhood.

Fox pointed out that some of the passing big rigs actually shake his windows. It is an issue he never had until lately.

Cottage got worse after

city moved to take pressure

off of Main thru downtown

“The city needs to do something before it gets worse,” Fox said.

The mess on Cottage in many ways is the result of city efforts more than a dozen years ago to take pressure off of Main Street through downtown.

At the time for anyone in south Manteca to reach Spreckels Avenue with its retail area anchored by the likes of Target, Home Depot and Food-4-Less  was to travel north on Main Street and turn east on Yosemite.

That’s because Spreckels Park dead-ended just past Phoenix Drive leaving a gap between there and Moffat Boulevard. When Spreckels was extended to Moffat it improved things somewhat.

The big change was a traffic consultant’s suggestion to create a downtown bypass by extending Industrial Park Drive beyond where it dead-ended just past Bessemer Avenue.

That did three things.

 It turned Cottage Avenue into a quasi-arterial given four streets were connected allowing people to travel from Lathrop Road to Union Road on the same roadway that changes names four times — Cottage Avenue, Spreckels Avenue, Industrial Park Drive, and Mission Ridge Drive.

It also extended Van Ryn Avenue to Industrial Park Drive making it easier for residents south of the 120 Bypass to access shopping, medical offices, and Manteca High.

While it wasn’t the primary objective it created an obvious truck route the city put in place to serve the Spreckels Park business park and Manteca Industrial Park from the 120 Bypass to Highway 99 via Main Street, Industrial Park Drive, Spreckels Avenue, and Yosemite Avenue.

Big rigs didn’t start popping up on Cottage with any consistency until after distribution centers located on West Louise Avenue as well as Airport Way plus the Lathrop Road and Highway 99 interchange.

The only effort the city has made to tackle traffic as well as truck issues on a communitywide basis is to pay for a $150,000 truck study 2½ years ago municipal leaders said was needed before they could effectively address residents’ concerns about trucks. That study still hasn’t been completed.

The city has also said it wants to spend significant money to update its traffic circulation plan.

A recent consultant study referenced the Cottage Avenue crossing as needing to be four lanes based on projected traffic volume from growth but did not offer any solutions regarding the rest of the street.

Not only was it developed as a collector street from an old country lane but the mile stretch outside the city to the north is lined with numerous small  parcels with homes built fairly close to the roadway.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com