W X Downtown Freeway Closing Coming to Land Park

Highways and roads in Sacramento like the W X freeway, for the most part, are in far better shape than say those in Minnesota. There is a standing joke in Minnesota that there are two seasons in that state: winter and road construction. But we don’t have to deal with huge potholes and overpasses collapsing in Sacramento, just the impatient jerk-offs who tailgate.

A jerk almost hit me while my husband and I were at PetSmart in Natomas this week. Apparently, this guy in a white pickup truck thought my husband was driving too slowly, so he sped around us. My husband honked at him because he should not have passed us doing 55 in the parking lot entrance. Then, as we were walking in the crosswalk up to the sidewalk of the shopping center, the pickup truck circled back around and missed hitting my huge butt within inches as it zoomed by again. Looked like it was on purpose to me.

I realize that the Natomas Marketplace can drive just about any sane person crazy but this was a bit nutty. Hey buddy, it’s not our fault your wife left you, your dog hates you and you’re out of Budweiser.

Just wait until the construction begins, though, on the W X freeway closing in Sacramento in a few months. They call it the W X freeway because it parallels W and X Streets. During May and June, we’ll have lane closures, from 14th Street to 26th Street, which stretches through downtown / Midtown / Land Park and Curtis Park. Caltrans is spending $46 million to fix the crosstown highway. Plans are to alternate lane closures in one direction at a time, so some hours eastbound traffic will have more lanes than westbound, and vice versa.

I wish the WX freeway closing would fix that horrible onramp problem at Riverside. My neighbor’s husband in Land Park was killed in a terrible traffic accident while merging at that spot. He crashed into a telephone company cable truck and died instantly. When merging from the Riverside onramp, you’re fighting traffic in the right lane, which is trying to get off on Highway 99; the middle lanes are heading for Interstate 80 and the far left lanes to Highway 50. This interchange is a nightmare.

It’s not much better merging to get off heading westbound to Land Park from Business 80, either, and trying to exit on 16th Street or 10th Street. My husband won’t even drive in that direction because he doesn’t want to merge and take a chance on death. He exists on 26th. I’m more of a risk taker, and my Porsche has more horsepower than his Prius, so I’ll do it, but I don’t much like it either. You’ve got to speed up to cross, and sometimes the traffic in front of you is at a dead stop. But that’s the beauty of living in Sacramento, more people = more problems.

I usually drive from my home in Land Park to my real estate office at Lyon in Midtown Sacramento in 8 minutes by taking the W X Freeway and cutting over to Business 80, but now I guess I’ll use the surface streets. Another minute or two on my travel time is not gonna kill me, but getting on the W X freeway closing might.