Hollister council members Tuesday put their support behind a downtown traffic study—including an extensive list of improvements—but some officials warned how the plan might take many years to complete.
Council members heard about the Downtown Traffic Corridor Study prepared by TJKM Transportation Consultants, which examined San Benito Street from Highway 25 to Nash Road. On May 19, council members OK’d the deal with the consultant to study downtown traffic, after the state’s transfer of the road to the city in exchange for the highway bypass. The consultant crafted the study to help the city adopt standards laid out in a 2008 downtown plan.
TJKM’s preferred alternative includes such ideas throughout the corridor as adding bicycle lanes, widening sidewalks, reducing through lanes to one in each direction, changing Fifth Street to a stop sign intersection, installing left-turn pockets at intersections, putting in landscaped buffers and medians, and adding signals and a roundabout at Gateway Drive.
On Tuesday, council members heard detailed recommendations suggested in the consultant’s plan. The four in attendance supported the study—Councilman Ray Friend was absent—but had varying levels of confidence in how fast the improvements might be rolled out.
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