State Route 99

California State Route 99

California 99, known alternately as the Golden State Freeway and as California's Workhorse Highway,¹ is a busy corridor between Wheeler Ridge and Red Bluff through the Central Valley. While Interstate 5 follows the west side of the valley, California 99 prefers to stay close to the historic route of U.S. 99, and many sections of freeway opened as part of U.S. 99 before the U.S. highway was decertified in favor of the state route. South of Sacramento, projects up and down the valley are underway in 2015 to improve the corridor by expanding the freeway to at least six lanes, fix deficient or obsolete interchanges, and remove remaining at-grade crossings. Some would like to see California 99 made into part of the Interstate Highway System, perhaps as Interstate 9 or Interstate 7, but no official timeline for such a conversion has been released. North of Sacramento, California 99 has freeway segments but also extensive two-lane rural highway segments. In certain areas north of Sacramento, nearby California 70 serves as the predominant through route.

California 99 follows the original alignment of historical U.S. 99 through the San Joaquin River Valley and the Sacramento River Valley from Lebec north to Red Bluff. While Interstate 5 provides the most direct route through these valleys, collectively known as the Central Valley, California 99 serves most of the large population centers in the valley: Bakersfield, Delano, Tulare, Visalia, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Turlock, Modesto, Manteca, Stockton, Lodi, Sacramento, Marysville/Yuba City, and Chico. Many of these cities are served by a business route following the original U.S. 99 alignment, some of which are signed with brown historical signs as well as the occasional state route business marker.

California State Route 99 Guides

History

California 99 is a segment of the Pacific Highway, a major north-south corridor bisecting the state of California. The highway was designated as U.S. 99 shortly after the inception of the state highway system in 1926 (the state numbered system was created around 1920-1924). The U.S. 99 designation was decommissioned in January 1964. Signage for the desert route south of Interstate 10 was removed in 1964 (that section of the route is now California 86). Between Indio and Los Angeles, U.S. 99 was replaced by Interstate 10; between Los Angeles and Wheeler Ridge, U.S. 99 was replaced by Interstate 5.

Between Wheeler Ridge and Sacramento, U.S. 99 signage was replaced with California 99 shields in Summer/Fall 1966. North of Sacramento, U.S. 99 and U.S. 99W designations remained until early 1973, when the last two-lane section north of Sacramento replaced by the Interstate 5 freeway. The section of California 99 between Sacramento and Yuba City/Marysville was not part of U.S. 99, U.S. 99E, or U.S. 99W. However, California 99 replaced U.S. 99E through Chico. California 99 ends just east of Red Bluff at California 36. However, older sections of U.S. 99 persist alongside Interstate 5, including some state maintained sections (such as California 263). Certain sections of Interstate 5 were signed as "Temporary Interstate 5" along the expressway portions between Redding and the Oregon state line until January 1992, which was when the last section of Interstate 5 in the lower Sacramento River canyon was opened to traffic.

Upgrading of U.S. 99 to four-lane expressway commenced circa 1935; most of the rural portions of U.S. 99 were four-lane by 1949; in-city portions of the route remained either two-lane or four-lane undivided at that point in time. Because of this situation, the California Division of Highways (Caltrans' pre-1973 predecessor agency) elected to concentrate initial construction of limited-access/grade-separated facilities as bypasses around the larger cities and towns along the route. The "first draft" plan featured freeways around the cities, connected by the existing expressway sections; this original plan was modified in the ensuing decades as populations centers shifted and expanded outward in the postwar growth spurt, resulting in the original freeway bypass plans being extended to encompass the suburbs which tracked the U.S. 99 alignment outward from central city points.

Eventually, the growth of the Central Valley from the 1950s onward prompted the Division of Highways eventual decision to upgrade the entire route to a full freeway. The early routing of Interstate 5 up the U.S. 99 corridor would have meant the full development of the route by 1972 or 1973; the realignment up the Legislative Route 238 "beeline" along the west side of the valley circa late 1957 and the corresponding shifting of the 90% federal funding share away from U.S. 99 resulted, after 1958, in a more "leisurely" deployment of funds toward the upgrading of that route. While most larger cities along the route (with Turlock being the most notable exception) were bypassed by the mid-1960's, the older rural expressway sections, including those traversing smaller towns, took somewhat longer to be fully developed. An exception was the succession of smaller cities in southern Tulare County (Earlimart, Pixley, Tipton); those were bypassed as a single project entity as if they were one long linear metro area.

Special thanks to Scott Parker for researching and writing most of this historical section on California 99, California's Main Street.

Timeline of Freeway Construction

The following is a timeline of the various cities to be bypassed, with notations as to the limits of the bypass project(s):

As of November 2005, there weare five sections of California 99 that remained expressway, all but one in Merced County. From south to north, these were:

  1. The portion addressed immediately above, between two and three miles in length, south of the California 152 junction in Madera County; it has since been upgraded.
  2. From the Merced county line north to just south of Merced, about 14 miles (upgraded via the Plainsburg Road freeway and Le Grand Road freeway projects in 2015). This was the longest non-freeway stretch; upgrading has been problematic both politically and logistically, as the California 99 expressway along this stretch is, for the most part, narrowly squeezed between a massive agricultural complex and the parallel railroad tracks; using eminent domain to forge a wider path met with resistance from well-connected farm interests; but in 1999 an agreement was reached, which has since resulted in enough right-of-way for an initial four-lane freeway, constructed immediately east of the present narrow expressway; this was constructed on an alignment allowing for ready expansion to six lanes. Interchanges would be few and far between, and designed in a similar fashion to those along Interstate 10 in the Palm Springs area, with the southbound ramps (nearest the RR tracks) elevated to meet the crossroad above the tracks to avoid curving the complex in a broad arc away from the original alignment (the purpose here is to avoid massive encroachment on the neighboring orchard land). Construction on this segment began in 2013 and continues through 2016.
  3. North of Atwater, there used to be a four-mile long stretch of expressway before the Livingston bypass is reached.
  4. Between the Merced River bridge and Delhi (about three miles) was the next expressway section.
  5. The shortest portion, slightly less than two miles, used to link Delhi and Turlock; the end of the freeway portions at both ends of this expressway stretch featured "ghost" ends, where the freeway alignment was eventually situated.

The 2005 SAFETEA-LU transportation reauthorization bill added California 99 as Congressional High Priority Corridor 54 and initiated the process to determine if California 99 can become part of the Interstate Highway System. For a route to be designated as part of the Interstate Highway System, the route must meet several basic criteria (per Assembly Bill Analysis of AJR 63):

Due to the age of California 99, the highway was built to Interstate standards in newer sections, but older sections have several deficiencies that would need to be improved according to Caltrans, including:

With the publication of the Route 99 Corridor Master Plan,² the recommended designation for California 99 would be either Interstate 7 or Interstate 9 (see Section 3.5.1 Consideration of Interstate Designation on page 57).

References:

  1. http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist6/99masterplan/
  2. 2003 California Transportation Journal. http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/news/publications/journal/AprJune03.pdf

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Page Updated Wednesday October 21, 2015.