Salinas making infrastructure improvements

Walk, bike or drive down almost any street in Salinas and you’ll find a problem, whether it’s a pothole or a problem sidewalk.

“I haven’t tripped but it does need a lot of work,” one resident said. “There’s a lot of cracks.”

“There’s a lot of potholes and broken sidewalks that make it uneven,” Ramon Avelar said. “If someone is distract, they can easily fall down.”

The city of Salinas says it’s spending a lot of money to improve roads and sidewalks with taxpayer dollars.

“We’ve been doing a lot of sidewalk repairs all over the city in each district,” said Salinas Public Works Director Gary Petersen. “We put about $1.2 million in sidewalk repairs in the last year, which is much more than we have in the past. We’re also looking at doing $1 million more beginning next month going forward.”

And with the passage of Measure X, more repairs are planned for the future.

The city believes it’s a step in the right direction, with other major road renovation projects in the works.

“Alisal is a street that cuts through the entire city and we want to redesign that to make the best use of it to make it better traffic flow but also to make it available for pedestrians and bicycles and buses and look at more modern transportation options,” Petersen said.

The redesign would affect Alisal Street from Blanco Road to Bardin Way.

Over on Boronda, there are plans to redesign and rebuild the roadway from Dartmouth Way to Everett Alvarez High School.

“It’s a big project with roundabouts and signals just to manage the traffic that’s out there and the traffic that’s projected to come,” Petersen said.