New look for J Street made permanent as Modesto tries to make downtown a destination
Modesto says its experiment of reconfiguring much of J Street by replacing parallel street parking with angled parking, reducing the number of traffic lanes and making intersections four-way stops has been a success.
And now the city will make the change permanent.
The City Council in September approved the restructuring on a temporary basis to help J Street restaurants during the pandemic by allowing them to expand outdoor dining into part of the street. The restructuring essentially narrowed the street, slowed traffic and made the street more of a destination for people on foot. That fits with the larger, long-term vision the city has for J Street and downtown.
The City Council at its May 25 meeting unanimously approved making the angled parking permanent as part of a project to resurface J Street. That means that part of J Street will continue to have one traffic lane in each direction, instead of as many as two.
J Street will be closed from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday as workers resurface the entire length of the street, from Ninth to 17th streets, with what is called a slurry seal. The coating will extend the life of the street five to seven years, according to the city. The street is expected to reopen to traffic at 4 p.m.
City will extend angled parking
Public Works Director Bill Sandhu said Modesto scheduled the work this way to minimize the inconvenience to the businesses and their customers. While people cannot drive on J Street as the road is being resurfaced, they can park on nearby streets and walk to J Street restaurants, stores and other businesses.
The experiment approved by the council in September was for J Street from Ninth to 14th streets. The city now will extend the angled parking and reduced traffic lanes to 16th Street. The angled parking has created more street parking.
Workers will put in a temporary center lane marker Saturday, but the permanent striping for the traffic lanes and angled parking will take place in the following week. The slurry seal and striping work is estimated to cost about $80,000, according to Community and Economic Development Director Jaylen French.
French said the reconfigured J Street has been a success. He said city staff contacted 24 businesses that make up a representative sample of the businesses along the street and 22 support the reconfigured street.
Modesto officials faced some pushback when the idea of reconfiguring J Street and making it into a destination street first surfaced a few years ago. Skeptics said it would not work because Modesto did not have enough residents who would support a destination street in downtown and it would tie up traffic on other streets.
Manuel Escobedo is the manager of Papachinos, one of the many restaurants along J Street. Escobedo said drivers have slowed down and are not running red lights at the intersections, making the street safer for everyone, including people on foot.
Escobedo said he wishes more was being done to address the effects of homelessness in downtown, as well as making downtown cleaner and brighter. “In a perfect world, everything would be done,” he said. “But the main point is I’m glad they did something.”
No longer a thoroughfare
Before the changes, J Street had been one of the routes drivers used to get through downtown and to McHenry Avenue, Ninth Street or Highway 99. With its four-way stops at intersections and reduced traffic lanes, J Street no longer meets that purpose.
But French said because downtown is set up on a grid, it has other nearby thoroughfares that drivers use to get through downtown. “... We’ve not heard about any negative impact to the surrounding streets,” he said.
French told City Council members at their May 25 meeting that he expected to be back before them in a couple of years with a roughly $1.5 million project to make J Street more of a destination where people stroll and linger.
That project would include additional landscaping and other amenities to improve the look and use of the street. And it’s all part of the larger vision for downtown outlined in a 20-year master plan the City Council approved in August 2020.
That vision calls for building 1,550 homes, streets that are more inviting to people on foot and bicycles and connecting downtown to the nearby Tuolumne River.
This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
