Home / Archive / Elk Grove: Tackling Traffic
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: August 2006
Tackling Traffic
Major improvements to midcentury infrastructure promise relief — but when?
Story by Julie Foster
The Grant Line Road-Highway 99 intersection two miles south of Elk Grove is a mess. Mark Baptista of California Custom Trailers on East Stockton Boulevard learned his lesson fast.
“I don’t even get off on Grant Line anymore,” says Baptista. “The first day I came to work, I thought the truck stopped on the roadside was disabled, but it was stopped because of the backed-up traffic.”
The area surrounding the Grant Line exit is home to propane plants, carpet and tile shops, Harvest Church, a spa store, John Deere Landscapes, a truck wash, a motorcycle shop and a Weyerhaeuser plant that employs 150 people.
Trains lumber across Grant Line Road numerous times a day; the road also functions as a shortcut for drivers wanting a back route to Highway 50 and the Sierra Nevada. The infrastructure for this traffic is old and substandard. But there’s help on the horizon: the Grant Line Road-State Route 99 interchange and road-widening projects, which, once started, will take 17 to 23 months to complete.
“As of now, a firm date to break ground on the project has not been determined,” says Diane Nguyen, transportation program manager for the city of Elk Grove.
Bert Brown, senior project manager with Elk Grove’s public works department, explains that plans for reducing congestion at the interchange finally merged onto the fast track three years ago. “When the city incorporated in 2000, we began in earnest to get the environmental documents in place and get the design phases going,” says Brown.
The interchange will be reconfigured into a partial cloverleaf; the Grant Line Road overcrossing will be replaced by a six-lane bridge, and East Stockton Boulevard will be realigned. Bicycle lanes and sidewalks will be added, and Grant Line Road will be widened to six and four lanes.
The estimated total cost of the interchange project, which is 100 percent locally funded, is $62.8 million.
Construction won’t be as overwhelming as it seems. “You will never not be able to get from Point A to Point B,” says Brown.
But one Grant Line Road business, John Deere Landscapes, has already relocated to greener pastures. “This is not by choice, but we will be losing one-half of the parking lot, which would make it pretty hard to unload my trucks,” says Manager Douglas Blosl. “There was just a lot of not knowing what would happen.”
Others are going to stick it out. “I am pleased with the city addressing my issues,” says Weyerhaeuser’s Gary Peterson. “We felt that as long as traffic was not blocked getting on and off Grant Line, we would be OK.”
