Getting out of Manteca’s newest affordable housing complex for seniors is proving to be dangerous business just as former Mayor Steve DeBrum predicted seven years ago.

In January a tenant trying to turn onto Cottage Avenue from the complex was struck so hard by another car that it sent his vehicle into a fence across the street.

His injuries were so severe it took him five months to heal to the point he could return home.

There has been at least one other accident since the complex that’s only access point ties into Alameda Street’s T-intersection with Cottage Avenue.

On Tuesday residents presented a petition to the Manteca City Council to do something about fast-moving traffic on Cottage. They suggested stop signs and even speed bumps.

Traffic heading south typically picks up speed in excess of the posted limited after cresting the overpass. Cottage just barely flattens out before it goes past the Alameda intersection that the Cottage Way housing complex ties into opened last year.

They also pointed to the need to restrict the parking of high vehicles near the entrance as well as cutting back shrubbery that impedes sightlines. Over the years the city has restricted parking near problematic residential intersections to vehicle 6 feet and under after RVs parked near corners created similar safety problems.

At one point there were two unhitched high profile trailers parked along Cottage creating visual issues. Just over a year ago the city updated ordinances banning unhitched trailers from being parked along city streets.

DeBrum back in 2015 pushed twice during the approval process to get stop sign installed on Cottage to make it a four-way stop with Alameda and what ended up being the entrance to the 48-unit Cottage Village.

Staff’s response each time was that conditions did not warrant stop signs and that the addition of 48 additional households entering and exiting one driveway at the intersection wouldn’t likely be a safety issue.

The narrow two-lane Cottage Avenue with dozens of homes with driveways south of the Highway 99 bridge has become a heavily traveled collector street/ quasi arterial.

Cottage Avenue was never intended to serve as a key collector street for traffic.

It was a narrow country road spanning a little over three miles for years before the 1960s when Doctors Hospital was built along it as well as one of Raymus Development’s original Manteca subdivisions.

It started at Lathrop Road north of Manteca and ended with a T-intersection at the then two-lane East Yosemite Avenue. South of the intersection was a house that was part of the Spreckels Sugar beet processing complex.

That changed 21 years ago when the sugar refinery was replaced with the 363-acre Spreckels Business Park that included the 166-home Curran Grove neighborhood. Cottage Avenue for all practicalal purposes was extended south to Moffat Boulevard as the four-lane Spreckels Avenue. East Yosemite Avenue was widened to four lanes as well.

Then 12 years ago the “missing link” heralded as a way to take pressure off the North Main Street corridor was put in place between the eastern edge of the Manteca Industrial Park and Moffat Boulevard.

Today Cottage Avenue is part of a continuous roadway that changes names four times. It goes from Cottage Avenue at Lathrop Road changing to Spreckels Avenue when it crosses Yosemite Avenue, changing to Industrial Park Drive when it crosses Moffat and then to Mission Ridge Drive when it crosses South Main Street until it T-intersects at Union Road.

DeBrum — a longtime champion of safety and reducing speeding along Cottage Avenue — asked in 2015 whether city council approval of the subsidized low-income senior citizens would trigger a need for stop signs at East Alameda Street and Cottage Avenue.

City staff indicated that wasn’t an issue although they promised to monitor it.

DeBrum’s concerns were based on increasing traffic volumes and speeding traffic cresting the Cottage Avenue bridge at the freeway that has the Alameda intersection at its southern base. The problem has increased as Manteca has grown.

In 2013 the council wrestled with pedestrian safety at Brookdale Way after 99 homes were built in  the triangle bordered by Cottage, Louise Avenue and the freeway requiring youth to cross Cottage going to and from Cowell School. The concern at the time was traffic volume and speed. That led to crossing signs with flashers that can be activated by pedestrians.

The big difference between East Alameda and Brookdale is that East Alameda is much closer to the overcrossing.
 
Making matters worse is the fact Cottage is the only north-south road crossing Yosemite Avenue that’s a collector street between Union Road and Austin Road besides Main Street that is constricted to two lanes through downtown. And since Austin Road is basically on the city’s eastern flank making its ability to move traffic within Manteca extremely minimal.

The only way to improve traffic flow is to widen Cottage Avenue to four lanes.

That isn’t likely to happen.

It would be extremely expensive as 20 plus homes along the corridor with driveways that open onto Cottage would have to be purchased and demolished.

The problem with traffic on Cottage surfaced in the draft general plan document that was used to shape the city’s update on how it will handle growth.

Based on traffic counts and development plans it recommended making the Cottage Avenue overpass of Highway 99 four lanes while keeping the segments of Cottage between Yosemite Avenue and the freeway and the freeway and Lathrop Road two lanes.

Staff indicated Tuesday they would meet with Cottage Village residents to review the situation.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com