Galt to start work on $5 million road safety project on Thursday

With the goal of children’s safety in mind, the City of Galt is set to begin working on a “Safe Routes to School” project on Thursday.

The $5.19 million construction project will include the installation of two miles of sidewalks, nearly 200 sidewalk ramps, road repairs, road resurfacing, new striping, dedicated bike lanes and a number of new flashing beacon crosswalks.

The project will last until July, according to Deputy Public Works Director Mark Clarkson, and there will be at least four crews working on this project simultaneously in different areas. The project extends from Kost Road in the south to Elm Street in the north, and from Sparrow Drive in the west to Lincoln Way in the east. With this many streets and neighborhoods involved, the city has provided a project site on its website,

www.ci.galt.us, for project information.

Next week, concrete work for sidewalks and ADA accessible ramps will begin. Work on concrete will go on for the next two months, Clarkson said. At the beginning of April crews will start putting in the flashing beacon crosswalks in front of several of the schools, and pavement work will be ongoing and will occur throughout the entire process of the project, Clarkson said.

Paving will start in about two weeks if weather permits. Most of the striping will start at the end of April and will also be ongoing throughout the project. Once an area is completed and has new asphalt concrete, the striping work will begin, Clarkson said.

“Because we have so many crews working out there, a lot of things are going to be happening simultaneously, and it’s a really short time frame for this project. It’s a big project,” Clarkson said.

The project is being funded by a combination of state and federal grants along with City of Galt Measure A funds, gas tax funding, and SB 1 transportation funding.

The city will be contributing a total of about $1.08 million towards the project.

According to Clarkson, the project has been in the works for eight years and in order to apply for the grants the city was required to identify the pathways to the schools that had the highest density of pedestrian and bicycle usage. In order do to that, Clarkson said the city did many pedestrian, bicycle and vehicle counts along school routes.

“We were able to go and show them that here are the impacts and here are the improvements that are needed on each of those roads, and then we applied along with everybody else in California for those grants, and that took a period of probably three years,” Clarkson said.

After applying for the grants, the state had to determine which projects were a priority and Galt’s project made the priority list.

“It was a lot of work on our end of it to do the application process and get on the priority and then go through the process to get the grant,” Clarkson said.

The aim of the project is for bicyclists and pedestrians to get to and from school in a more safe environment, Clarkson said.

Anyone with questions regarding the project can visit the city’s website or contact the Public Works Department at 209-366-7260.