Crows Landing Road in Modesto can be rough on walkers, bicyclists. Help is on the way
Crows Landing Road in south Modesto will get about $6 million in upgrades to make it more inviting for people on foot and bicycle.
The work will happen on the 1.5-mile stretch between Pecos and Whitmore avenues, just south of Highway 99. Crows Landing will get a bike lane on each side, raised medians in the center left-turn lane, and flashing beacons at a few crosswalks. Sidewalk, lighting and disabled-access upgrades are coming, too.
The plans emerged after city and Stanislaus County officials decided not to widen Crows Landing from four to six lanes for cars and trucks. They hope to make it somewhat more of a neighborhood street for the largely low-income area.
The work between Hatch and Whitmore roads is expected to be done by October under a $3.92 million contract approved June 23 by the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. Teichert Construction of Roseville got the job, funded from state and federal sources.
The portion between Hatch and Pecos is a Modesto project scheduled for summer 2021 at a cost of about $2 million, city spokesman Thomas Reeves said. Details are still being refined for the project, funded by federal sources.
“The city’s and county’s design have been coordinated and will feel like one continuous project to travelers (once both are complete),” Reeves said in an email.
Lots of cars, trucks, bikes and walkers
Crows Landing Road is a key part of the county’s transportation system. An average of about 32,000 motor vehicles pass through the project area each day, said a memo from Stanislaus County Public Works.
The road extends about 20 mostly rural miles from Seventh Street in Modesto to Highway 33 on the West Side. The project area has a mix of grocery stores, restaurants, automotive businesses, furniture shops and other uses.
Several thousand people live on the blocks east and west of Crows Landing. The homes date to Depression-era settlements by migrants from the Dust Bowl states. The corridor has a decidedly Latino flavor today.
Navigating the road can be nerve-wracking because the center left-turn lane has raised medians in only a few spots. Drivers dart from the many parking lots fronting the businesses. Bicyclists have to share the road with motor vehicles. Pedestrians have few safe crosswalks. Sidewalks tend to be narrow, and are missing in places.
Back in 2001, the strip got a visit from Dan Burden, a Florida-based expert on walkable streets, before he spoke at a public meeting on the topic.
“It’s as challenging a road as I’ve found anywhere in America,” he said. He suggested raised medians and filling of sidewalk gaps.
Around the same time, parents at Shackelford School got the county to install stoplights at Crows Landing and School Street. Many children walk across five lanes of traffic to and from the campus.
Details for walkers and bikers
The Hatch-Whitmore design emerged from public meetings in the affected area.
The bicycle lanes will be buffered from motor vehicles with pavement striping, rather than raised berms. New light poles will aid cyclists and pedestrians alike. The county portion of the project includes beacons protecting walkers crossing at Amador, Imperial and Colusa avenues.
The county will remove one oddity from Crows Landing, the stoplight at Butte Avenue. It is a mere 100 or so feet from another stoplight at Winmoore Avenue.
The county project does not include landscaping on the mostly treeless street. That would have required a special tax on property owners in the corridor, an unpopular idea, said Christopher Brady, a deputy director at Public Works.
The contractor will shift traffic across the lanes as needed to install the improvements.
The city/county plans do not include the quarter-mile of Crows Landing north of the freeway, a two-lane route. It eventually will connect with the Seventh Street Bridge over the Tuolumne River, which will be widened from two to four lanes in the coming years.
Long-term vision for Crows Landing
The upcoming work on Crows Landing will hardly turn it into a grand boulevard. The lack of trees is one reason. Another is that the streetscape is dominated by the parking lots fronting most businesses, a bane to advocates for walkable urban areas.
But the city has a vision for making the north end of Crows Landing something different. A large vacant space could get a multistory mix of homes and businesses that hug the sidewalks. This would happen on the former site of Modesto Tallow, a rendering plant that sent a foul odor into the neighborhood for decades.
The current property owners are working with the city on the plan, but details and a timeline are not set, Reeves said.
Modesto laid out this vision in a 2015 study on Crows Landing Road as far south as Whitmore. It suggested short-term projects, such as the upcoming bike and pedestrian upgrades, and a rethinking of land use.
“In order to improve the pedestrian-friendliness of Crows Landing Road, it is important to slow traffic and make motor vehicle movements more predictable, reduce potential conflicts between pedestrians and traffic, and locate buildings and building entries near the sidewalk,” the report said.
This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
