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West Main project near completion
West Main street
Work is slated to be completed on West Main Street by the end of September (KRISTINA HACKER/The Journal).

The long-awaited reconstruction of West Main Street is nearing completion — finally — with work expected to be finished in the coming weeks.

Interim Director of Development Services/City Engineer Nathan Bray gave the Turlock City Council an update on the roadwork at their Aug. 27 meeting, stating that “our goal right now is the end of September to be done with this project.”

Bray said final paving is set to start Sept. 16, with striping and traffic signal work to commence near the end of September.

Work was expected to be completed by Aug. 1. 

“The West Main Project is going along kind of as we planned,” said Bray. “There have been some delays with the project. We’re working with our contractor to work through them. We found some underground utility tanks and most recently we have a conflict with some PG&E lines. We’ve been on the horn with PG&E and they are out on site lowering their lines, basically to get out of the way, so we can continue on with the road construction.”

The City of Turlock broke ground on the West Main Street project — Turlock’s first Measure L (countywide transportation tax) funded roads project — in July 2018.

The West Main Corridor project has two phases. Phase I included replacing medians and closing all but two median openings from S. Walnut Road to West Avenue South for better traffic control. The City also installed a wrought iron fence in the median adjacent to Osborn Two-Way Immersion Academy, similar to the one in front of Turlock Junior High School, to encourage pedestrians to use the designated crosswalks.

Phase II, which started in April 2019, includes a complete reconstruction of West Main Street from West Avenue South to Lander Avenue. The project will also see a majority of the water, sewer and storm utilities on West Main removed and reinstalled due to age, size or location.

During their Aug. 27 meeting, the City Council once again discussed taking another look at the Measure L project list, with possibly putting residential streets higher on the list. A new road project strategy is expected to be on the Council agenda in upcoming months, with the goal to have a project list ready to begin construction by next summer, according to Bray.