County officials celebrate completion of Lower Sacramento Road work
Spirits soared as high as the afternoon sun in a gravel lot near the corner of Lower Sacramento Road and Armstrong Road as firefighters, citizens and various city and county officials and employees gathered on Monday afternoon to celebrate the official completion of Lower Sacramento Road’s improvement project.
The project lasted from October 2014 to May 2017, and led the San Joaquin County Public Works Department to win the 2017 Project of the Year Award from the American Public Works Association.
Improvements to the 21⁄2mile stretch of Lower Sacramento Road, between Eight Mile Road and Harney Lane, included the installation of two lanes in each direction, complete with 8-foot-wide shoulders and bike routes, as well as burying utility cables underground, adding a concrete median and installing emergency exemption sensors on the traffic lights, which detect the presence of emergency vehicles and change traffic lights when the vehicles need to pass an intersection, an addition which Woodbridge Fire District Chief Butler says will help improve response times in the area of West Lodi and North Stockton.
“Most of the bigger cities have them, and now we’re trying to bring them into the rural areas,” Butler said.
San Joaquin County Public Works Director Kris Balaji began the presentation by thanking local and county governments and agencies, such as the City of Stockton, the City of Lodi and the San Joaquin Council of Governments as well as other organizations such as PG&E, AT&T and design firms such as HDR and WSP.
“This goes to show the partnership with these cities that allowed this project to succeed so quickly,” Balaji said.
Gary Prost, a senior field representative for Congressman Jerry McNerney (D-Stockton), presented a certificate on behalf of the congressman, congratulating San Joaquin Public Works on their project’s success following an impromptu speech by Lodi’s own Mayor Doug Kuehne, who commented on how the road improvements will encourage commerce between Stockton and Lodi, especially for Lodi’s wineries.
“It’s really important that we’re allowing Stocktonians
to reach our wineries more quickly,” Kuehne joked.
Balaji reminded Kuehne of the presence of San Joaquin County Supervisor Chuck Winn, a former officer with California Highway Patrol and former Deputy Sheriff Elbert Holman, Stockton’s vice mayor and representative of District One, prompting Kuehne to voice his support for Uber and Lyft, as well as taxi services.
Winn commended the project for using local contractors to complete 90 percent of the work, using the project’s budget of $7.5 million dollars from the Measure K bond, which originally passed in 1990 and was renewed in 2007.
“This really is a dream come true,” Winn said.