Manteca’s two freeway corridors— Highway 99 and the 120 Bypass — are being shaped by decisions voters made in 1990 and again in 2006 to support the countywide Measure K half cent sales tax to fund roads and transit.

The latest impact is re-engineering of the first phase of the Highway 99/120 Bypass connector project being overseen by the San Joaquin Council of Governments that will essentially widen the 120 Bypass between Union Road to Highway 99 from four to six lanes by the end of 2027.

It is one in a long list of freeway, passenger, rail, bus, bicycle lane/path, pedestrian safety, and city street projects and augmented municipal road work funds that Measure K overseen by SJCOG has done since it was first adopted in 1990 for a 20-year period.

Seventy-eight percent of voters in 2006 supported renewing the sales tax for another 30 years.

At the time of the renewal, the impact of Measure K was closing in on $735 million in terms of investment in roads and transit.

The half cent sales tax by 2041 is projected to have leveraged $2.64 billion in street, freeway, and transit upgrades throughout the county.

SJCOG has taken it to the next level with the Highway 99/120 Bypass connector project.

And that’s in addition to investing $5 million toward the $36.9 million cost of the first phase.

It is the first time the agency has basically overseen the construction management of a freeway project.

In doing so, it provided a flexibility that is paying huge dividends when the current first phase got derailed in terms of how adding a second transition lane from the 120 Bypass to southbound Highway 99 was to be built.

The original plans called for a bridge with a support column to join the existing eastbound Bypass crossing of Van Ryn Avenue.

However, Union Pacific Railroad dropped a bombshell when it decided not to allow the bridge support column within its right-of-way as it would make it impossible for them to double track at some point in the future the busy Fresno line that runs through Manteca and beneath the Bypass.

Had the state been overseeing the construction, it could have done what SJCOG did to address the roadblock but not likely as quickly or as efficiently.

That’s because SJCOG, besides securing funding for the project, by overseeing construction has the ability to move faster.

The result is the Austin Road overpass replacement work won’t be delayed.

The addition of the second transition lane to Modesto won’t be in place until a year later near the end of 2027.

The solution, which is to build a bridge without a column support to fill the gap between the freeway bridges crossing Van Ryn Avenue, also means the first phase will include making the Bypass six lanes from Highway 99 to Union Road.

The earliest that was expected to happen was 10 or so years from now.

The bridge SJCOG is currently engineering that was close the Van Ryn gap, will be designed in a manner that the third phase that adds a complex ramp system for Highway 99 and 120 Bypass traffic heading south  seeking to exit at Austin Road can be accommodated.

The same is true of traffic heading northbound from Austin Road to the westbound Bypass that will do so without actually driving on Highway 99.

It is not the first time Measure K has had a major impact on the 120 Bypass.

SJCOG was able to fund widening the Bypass to four lanes and adding ramps at Union Road six years ahead of the timeline the state was working on in the mid-1990s.

It happened because SJCOG used Measure K money as an advance to the state. SJCOG was reimbursed six years later when the widening funds programmed into the State Transportation Improvement Plan for the project became available.

The fact SJCOG had required local matching funds in hand allowed it to leverage a $458 million widening and interchange upgrade project that took 14 miles of Highway 99 from Yosemite Avenue in Manteca to the Crosstown Freeway in Stockton from four to six lanes.

That allowed San Joaquin County to be at the front of the line in 2011 for Proposition 1B state bond funding requiring local matches aimed at upgrading a large swath of the Highway 99 corridor.

SJCOG also advanced the state $90 million just over a decade ago to get Interstate 205 from Interstate 5 to the Alameda County line widened from four to six lanes years ahead of schedule.

Measure K will also help add additional lane capacity to Interstate 205 and Interstate between Stockton and I-205 in the next 10 to 15 years.

Measure K funding has been a part of a number of major endeavors in Manteca including acquiring and improving the Tidewater Bikeway, ACE passenger rail service, constructing the transit station, expanding San Joaquin Transit District bus service, widening railroad crossings such as Louise Avenue as well as help funding other arterial upgrades.

That is in addition to augmenting Manteca’s annual street maintenance spending by roughly $1 million on average a year.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com