This tweak has made the Briggsmore/99 interchange in Modesto a little less hairy
An especially daunting turn lane has been removed from the Briggsmore Avenue interchange on Highway 99 in Modesto.
No longer can drivers turn left to North Ninth Street from the freeway overpass. It is one small step toward the city’s long-term goal, mostly unfunded, of simplifying the interchange.
The painted lane marker was replaced in January by a concrete median. It is part of $14.7. million in upgrades on Ninth from Briggsmore to L street downtown. By year’s end, the stretch will have three roundabouts for drivers and better access for walkers and bicyclists.
Briggsmore is an east-west route until a sharp turn to the south near Highway 99. It becomes Carpenter Road at the overpass.
The loss of the left-turn pocket means downtown-bound drivers must remain on Carpenter until at least Woodland Avenue. The upside: less worry about a collision atop the overpass, especially at night or during storms.
“It’s a very difficult movement to make,” City Engineer Toby Wells told the City Council on Sept. 23. “This will significantly improve the safety of that area.”
Council members voted 7-0 that night to award the entire Ninth Street project to United Pavement Maintenance, based in Hughson.
How did Briggsmore get so complicated?
Ninth Street was the state highway until the current alignment was completed in the mid-1960s. Ninth has remained an access route to 99 from the south, but it is a tight fit at the bridge. Drivers have little time and space to squeeze in with other traffic. Some are headed to the freeway ramps, some to busy Sisk Road and Orangeburg Avenue.
The recent change does not keep drivers from making right turns involving Ninth Street, Wells said. One is toward Sisk and Orangeburg. The other is from Carpenter onto Ninth, a shortcut to downtown.
The interchange is further complicated by the twisting routes of Briggsmore, Sisk and Orangeburg in the area. Briggsmore got that way because it follows a curving Modesto Irrigation District canal, built half a century before this part of town was developed.
”It’s a mess, to put it simply,” a traffic engineer said at a February 2025 meeting on long-range fixes for the interchange. He also likened it to a “spaghetti bowl.”
The speaker was Howard Michael, an associate vice president and principal engineer at AECOM. The firm’s Sacramento office has a $6.4 million contract with Modesto to study options for the interchange
Funding is not yet in hand for construction. It could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars for new ramps and other major features. Work could start as soon as 2030 if state and federal partners pitch in.
The cost is much less for tweaks such as the recent left-turn closure. A longer-term idea is to entirely disconnect North Ninth from the interchange. That was among the suggestions when The Modesto Bee queried readers in 2022.
What is being built on North Ninth now?
Funding for the Ninth Street work includes $8.7 million from Measure L, a half-percent local sales tax. The rest is from a state grant program that seeks to build low-cost housing within easy walking or biking distance of transit.
That grant also helped with construction of the second phase of Archway Commons. It now has a total of 150 apartments at Ninth Street and Carver Road.
Ninth already has a bicycle lane protected from motor vehicles, but it gets little use. The current project will add shade trees and lighting. The Briggsmore end connects with another existing bike path, to the Modesto Junior College West Campus.
Roundabouts have become common in Modesto and many other locales. Wells told the council they reduce crashes by about 80% compared with stop signs and traffic lights.
Details on roundabouts coming this year to Ninth Street:
- One will be where Carver and Princeton Avenue dead-end at Ninth. Archway Commons and other destinations are nearby.
- Another will be at Tully Road and Ninth, near MJC’s East Campus.
- The third will be next to the Needham Street overpass. An upcoming project will link to the Virginia Corridor Trail, which reaches into north Modesto.
The current project will improve sidewalks and bus stops all along North Ninth. The bike path’s L Street end will be just a block from the Modesto Transit Center.
Much of Ninth Street will have one lane for motor vehicles each way, rather than two. The design reflects a global movement toward making life easier for people on foot or bike.
“I’m really excited to see this happen,” Mayor Sue Zwahlen said just before the September vote. “I think it will be another area that will provide beautification as well as safety features.”
The state grant came from the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program. The same source is helping with a five-story apartment building about to rise at Seventh and J streets. The funding includes bike lanes up I Street to 17th Street, then over to the Dry Creek Trail.
