Student safety an issue, H Street in front of Modesto High will be cut from 4 to 2 lanes
By the fall of 2024, the four lanes of H Street in front of Modesto High School will be reduced to two lanes as part of an $11.5 million city project to improve safety for people on foot and bicycle.
The high school is divided by the street, with the main campus on one side and more than 30 classrooms and other facilities on the other. Students cross daily between classes as well as at the start and end of the school day.
H Street changes it name to Paradise Road once it passes the school. The project’s boundaries include more than the high school and run from H Street at First Street to Paradise Road at Sheridan Street, a distance of roughly seven-tenths of a mile.
Paradise Road runs at a diagonal to the mostly north-south street grid of west Modesto. This creates oddly shaped intersections for drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists.
A little more than half of that stretch of Paradise is four lanes, with the rest made up of one travel lane in each direction and a center turning lane. Except for the stretch in front of Modesto High, the four-lane section of Paradise will be reduced to a traffic lane in each direction and a center turning lane.
Asked how reducing the number of lanes in front of the high school will affect traffic, city spokeswoman Diana Ruiz-Del Re said the project’s focus is on making the road safer for people on foot and bicycle.
There will be a concrete median with a fence dividing the two lanes in front of the high school. The crosswalk will be widened and raised to the level of the curb in what is called a speed table, with cars driving up and over an incline to cross the table.
“This is a project that we are excited to execute and deliver,” said Toby Wells, the city’s director of engineering services. Wells said the city worked closely with school district on the project.
Modesto High has about 2,400 students. Modesto City Schools also is working on a project to reduce the need for students to cross H street to attend class.
Numerous car-vs.-pedestrian accidents
The Police Department reports there were five vehicle-vs.-pedestrian accidents near the high school on H Street in the last three years.
Department spokeswoman Sharon Bear said in a text that two involved “students or at least minors” and the other three involved adults. None was fatal.
The project includes work on several side streets near the high school, which will be repaved and restriped. The project will add bike lanes, new sidewalks to fill in gaps and safer pedestrian crossings.
Traffic roundabouts will be built at Washington and I streets near the high school and Chicago Avenue at Paradise Road, according to a city report. Chicago is a skewed intersection with five streets.
“I think the roundabout would be nice,” said Kim Ly, the manager of Paradise Donuts & Sandwiches, which is near the planned roundabout. Because the intersection is skewed, Ly said, it is difficult for cars to make left and right turns from Chicago when traffic is heavy.
Modesto City Schools spokeswoman Linda Mumma Solorio said in an email that one of school district’s high-priority projects is to upgrade the main campus to house all of its classrooms except for its agriculture classes, which will remain on the other side of H Street.
The district would use Measure L — the $198 million bond voters approved in November to improve the district’s high schools — to pay for this. Mumma Solorio said the district anticipates the project would get underway in June 2024 and be completed by the start of the 2026-27 school year.
Work slated to start in fall
Wells said the city’s plan is for construction to start this fall by Chicago Avenue and work toward the high school, with an expected completion date of fall 2024.
The bulk of the work in front of the school will occur when school is not in session. “We asked the city to keep the road open in front of Modesto High School during the regular school year,” Mumma Solorio said in an email. “The city agreed to make the campus accessible to our families.”
The City Council on Aug. 22 approved awarding an $8.5 million construction contract for the project to Modesto-based George Reed Inc. The $11.5 million project’s other costs include design work, engineering and construction administration by the city.
Modesto is paying for the project with a $3.9 million grant from the state’s Active Transportation Program, with the rest of the funding coming from the city’s share of Measure L, the half-cent countywide transportation tax voters approved in 2016.
The Active Transportation Program promotes walking and bicycling and reducing the reliance on vehicles to reduce greenhouse gases. The program favors low-income areas, such as west Modesto, for improvements.
This story was originally published September 7, 2023 at 5:30 PM.
