Golden State Boulevard will soon receive some much-needed improvements as the Turlock City Council approved a $2.34 million roadway project.

The project will rehabilitate aged pavement segments of Golden State Boulevard from Main Street to 20th Century Boulevard and include the construction of accessible pedestrian ramps, new traffic striping and replacement of damaged sidewalks, curbs and gutters.

The project was put out to bid in November 2020. Due to additional costs, the limited available funds and the base bid unit prices being higher than anticipated, city staff recommended breaking up the project into three phases and only awarding the bid for the first phase. However, Council members and community members, voiced that road improvements were a priority wanted to see the entire project funded.

“Looking at this, I think Council and Mayor you are on the right track. Why do we want to do this piecemeal? If we could delay the payment to them until after we had availability of funds —and I know that’s exactly what we don’t want to do, commit money before we have it for the job — but why do this piecemeal? This is a project that has been on the books for years…if there’s anyway to get monies to do the whole thing…it should be done in one fell swoop,” said community member Milt Triewieler.

There were also some questions about why bike lanes weren’t included in the project plans. Bray said the project planning process began in 2017 and bike lanes were just overlooked, but could be added in a change order.

“That part of Golden State I see as being a critical connector to our downtown core; it’s when Golden State stops being high-speed… where people start slowing down to appreciate the city, and its connectivity to the transit center I definitely want to see a biking consideration there,” said Council member Andrew Nosrati.

Funding for the project will be comprised of $929,033 of federal funds specifically for Golden State Boulevard improvements, $250,000 in gas tax funds, $55,000 in LTF funds and the remaining in Measure L countywide transportation tax funds.

The project bid was awarded to Granite Construction of Fresno. The project is expected to begin by the end of March, with an anticipated completion date sometime in the summer.