Most people who drive along Mission Boulevard in Hayward know that one of the lanes is extremely damaged and full of pot-holes. This brings many inconveniences to drivers.
And still, in the downtown area along Mission, the traffic light is very dim.
Mission Blvd. has become the most important part of an ongoing plan by Hayward to fix up its damaged roads.
In order to fix the damages, the City Of Hayward worked with the Alameda County Transportation Authority to carry out a replacement project back in November 2007 at a cost of $94.5 million.
This project is a replacement for the Route 238 bypass project, which is to serve as the connection between Interstates 880 and 580.
The project is to improve the road from Mission to Industrial Parkway all the way north to the 238 bypass, as well as the Foothill, Mission and Jackson Boulevard intersection, and then up to 580. To improve a short portion of Highway 92, which consists of Jackson and north I-880 from Mission, Foothill and Jackson up to A Street and a short section of A Street between Mission and Foothill will all be worked on.
“There are two major changes on Mission,” said Kevin Briggs, project manager of the Hayward road construction project. “First, Mission will change to one-way between Foothill and A Street. Also, when you arrive at Foothill and Mission, you can’t continue, you have to turn on to Foothill. The second change is that A Street is going to be one way.”
“For example, if you want to go to the Hayward public library from Mission, you can’t get to the library from the mission anymore directly. You have to go to a different street—for example, maybe Fletcher—because they changed the operation of intersection and you can’t go that way anymore. North toward Mission, you must exit to Foothill now. It transitions to Foothill only, and you can’t go north directly on Mission. It only goes south.”
Replacing and fixing damaged sections, improving the condition of the roads and public transportation facilities are the main goals of the project. Besides the main changes, beautifying the road is still becoming more important in order to make it look nicer. sections, improving the condition of the roads and public transportation facilities are the main goals of the project. Besides the main changes, beautifying the road is still becoming more important in order to make it look nicer.
“We are going to install a brand new curb, put up overhead utility lights, and install lines such as PG&E power, AT&T telephone, Comcast cables—which are all going to underground, and replace old water lines, which are under the road,” said Briggs. “We also are putting in many trees and flowers [they removed 200 trees from Mission, because they were too small] in concrete to make the trees grow bigger and nicer.”
Because the most important element of the roadwork to the drivers is safety, the City of Hayward road construction department is spending $50 million on the construction of safety updates.
“We don’t want the traffic to move through faster, but we want it move through more efficiently and safely,” said Briggs. “There are some dimmers on the traffic light to control the level of the light. There will be brand new traffic signals on Mission after the construction.”
“We are also putting in a state-of-the-art ‘Adaptive Traffic Management System,’” said Briggs. “Basically, that takes information from the upstream traffic signal and from video cameras detecting people in different lanes. That information goes into computer programs.”
Right now the city has closed two lanes on Mission Boulevard to carry out its construction. The lack of two lanes on Mission has taken a toll on motorists—especially in the morning, where tons of cars can be seen stuck in the traffic jam, moving at a slow crawl.
“It’s caused a lot of traffic, and actually this morning when I drove from Mission, they were blowing the dirt or whatever in the rocks,” said Kellie Jones, a CSUEB employee. “I was concerned about my car getting hit. I think they can make the construction schedule at a different time. Maybe they could work at night.”
“I think it’s bad to do it during the day when there are so many cars,” said Nancy Hernandez, a CSUEB nursing major. “I think they should do it at night when there are less cars, because it’s such a populated area.”
“I use to take the shuttle. We just have only one shuttle and it takes so much longer than before. I only live ten minutes away, but now I have to leave half an hour before, and sometimes I don’t even make it.”
“We are constructing during both day and night time,” said Mustafa Taha, an inspector on the Hayward Route 238 project. “But most of the work is done in daytime, because some of the works are very noisy for a neighborhood, especially in this area. We can’t do it at night time.”
“Plus, there are time restrictions to removing material or bringing material—the city has restrictions on removing and bringing material after 5 p.m. Therefore, we have to do most of the work in the daytime.”
The office of Hayward Route 238 Project received a lot of complaints when they began working on the project at night. Faced with these problems, they changed the plan to both day and night to decrease some noise, and to relieve the stress of traffic—they will allow longer green lights at the Mission and Carlos Bee intersection.
“We are monitoring the traffic signals, especially in the morning [from 8-9 a.m.],” said Taha. “We are giving more green time [normally 20-30 seconds, now up to 40-60 seconds] to relieve the traffic.”
“The contract scheduled is changing, but right now the Mission portion of the project should be finish by June 2012, maybe sooner,” said Taha. “We hope everybody can understand that we are very apologetic about the inconvenience of the traffic, but at the end, once the project is complete, everybody will see the benefits.”
