The San Benito County Board of Supervisors will consider
approving a $556,000 project to install traffic signals along Union
Road at the intersections with Southside Road and San Benito
Street.
The San Benito County Board of Supervisors will consider approving a $556,000 project to install traffic signals along Union Road at the intersections with Southside Road and San Benito Street.
During its 9:30 a.m. meeting on Tuesday, the Board is expected to review and adopt the plans for installing the traffic signals, which traffic experts said will make the intersections safer and help traffic flow more smoothly.
“If you go out to the San Benito Street intersection when school gets out or at peak traffic hours, it’s a pretty hairy intersection,” County Public Works Director Doug Koenig said. “It’s the same thing at Southside Road. People can not get out of Southside Road during peak hours.”
Koenig said both intersections were evaluated by traffic engineers with Hexagon Consultants and met the required volume of traffic for installing a traffic signal.
Although the poles and masts are designed to accommodate turn lane signals on Southside, no additional improvements are planned there. However, the plan also calls for an added turn lane on San Benito Street and to raise the height of the curve at the intersection to make it easier for cars traveling westbound to negotiate the curve.
“It’s going to be a lot nicer for parents to get their kids to school,” Koenig said.
The new traffic lights and intersection improvements have been under consideration by the Board for nearly a year, Koenig said.
“Both projects were approved during the budget process last fall,” he said.
Before the construction process can begin, the Board will have to formally adopt the plans and send the project out for bid.
Once a construction company is chosen to install the traffic lights and complete the other road improvements, Koenig said the project will not take too long to finish.
“Assuming we get good bids, we should have a contract by late February and we could have the project completed by the end of June,” he said.
If the project would cause too much of a disruption to the normal traffic flow, Koenig said officials would consider delaying construction until after San Benito High School is out for the summer.
“We don’t want to create a worse (traffic) problem while school is in session,” Koenig said.
The project will not cost the county any money. Measure A, passed nearly a decade ago, authorized $400,000 towards for improvements at Union and San Benito, with the understanding that any costs over that amount would be paid through the local Traffic Impact Fee account.
The approved budget includes $150,000 for the installation of signals at Union and Southside, which will come from traffic impact fees.
