A group of roughly a dozen bicyclists rejoiced as city officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Sports Park Bike and Pedestrian Overcrossing, which was built over the last three years to connect the southeast and west side areas of Woodland.
The ceremony, held on the west side of the overcrossing at Matmor Road and Sports Park Drive, featured local leaders including Mayor Tania Garcia-Cadena, City Council members, City Manager Ken Hiatt and two Woodland Joint Unified School District Board members including President Rogelio Villagrana and Trustee Noel Rodriguez.
Spencer Bowen, communication and strategic policies manager for Woodland, said the bridge has proven to be a success with city staff having trouble setting up for the event because of the number of people who use the bridge.
“We saw commuters to work, parents with strollers, young folks riding their bikes to school and more,” Bowen remarked.
Councilman Tom Stallard spoke during the ceremony noting that although Highway 113 is a “very important transportation link,” it has also “had the impact of cutting our community in two.”
“This pedestrian and bike overpass helps unite the two sides of our community and will allow those on the east side to get to our new Community and Senior Center and the pool that will be coming in 2025 as well as help their children get to the middle schools, both of which are on the west side,” Stallard highlighted.
He also explained that this project is part of a larger bike route for the whole city calling it “a huge improvement for all of us.”
“I’m just really happy with it,” Stallard stressed. “It’s not only functional, it’s beautiful. I rode my bike to the ceremony and around Spring Lake Park, and I was pretty impressed.”
Garcia-Cadena agreed with Stallard noting that the bridge creates a “much safer and connected city” while also touching on the health and climate impacts the bridge will have on the community.
“We have people on the other side of Highway 113, especially students, who need to travel across to get to school or to the Community Center and they’re either dependent on an adult to drive them or they have to travel across Gibson, which is extremely dangerous,” she emphasized.
The mayor argued that this overcrossing creates an easy pathway for them that also helps the city address goals created in the council’s Climate Action Plan by reducing the reliance on vehicles.
Garcia-Cadena originally had concerns with the cost of the project when it was being debated in an August 2021 council meeting noting at the time that there was an increase of more than $1 million in the project’s budget.
The total budget for the project in 2021 was $7.6 million, which Community Development Director Brent Meyer said was partially due to the cost of hiring skilled people to build the bridge.
“It is an important project and, honestly, I’m glad that we did move on it when we did because those expenses would have increased over time,” she emphasized. “There was just kind of some hope that after COVID prices would return to normal, but that didn’t happen.”
However, the money allocated from the capital budget has increased from $7.6 million to $8.1 million in the last three years, which Meyer explained is due to $220,000 in change orders that raised contract costs, delays, inflationary cost increases that changed the Woodland Christian School Agreement and other miscellaneous costs such as additional environmental documentation and clearance, PG&E costs and legal fees generally associated to project delays.
For anyone unaware of the project or who hasn’t used it, Garcia-Cadena encouraged them to go check the bridge out.
“I was really happy to see so many people using it,” she said. “It’s perfect for bikers, runners, walkers and it ends right there at a park. It’s just a really easy and accessible way of getting around and getting some exercise.”
