By Michael W. Braa, Sr.
Feb 4, 2025
Los Banos at a Crossroads: The Long Road to a Bypass
For decades, Los Banos has wrestled with its worsening traffic congestion, particularly along Highway 152, the city’s main commercial artery. Residents and business owners have waited for relief as state and local leaders debated solutions. While the long-promised Los Banos Bypass became a bureaucratic casualty of shifting state priorities, the city has taken matters into its own hands with the Pioneer Corridor project—a locally controlled alternative to ease congestion and improve traffic flow.
With the City Council’s December 18, 2024, vote approving the first major construction phase, this project has finally taken a crucial step forward. However, history has taught us that plans and approvals do not always translate into results. Will Pioneer Corridor succeed where the state’s bypass plan failed?
A History of Broken Promises: The “Lost” Bypass
The fight for a Los Banos bypass dates back 60 years. “Way back around ‘65 or ‘66, the bypass was first proposed,” Mayor Mike Amabile recalled in a recent interview with the Enterprise. In the 1990s and early 2000s, state and local leaders worked to design and fund a north-of-town expressway to divert Highway 152 traffic. Amabile was mayor during part of this process and personally met with Caltrans officials to push the project forward.
“I had met with the Caltrans director at the time, and he told me, ‘If you can get the easements, the clock will start ticking, and we’ll have to build it,’” Amabile said. With this in mind, the city secured $16 million to buy the necessary land easements. But then, in what Amabile describes as a major turning point in the city’s transportation future, the money sat unused for two years—and then disappeared. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know Caltrans didn’t want us to buy the easements,” he said.
By the time officials realized the bypass was slipping away, state funding had dried up, and costs ballooned to over $600 million. The bypass—once seen as inevitable—was effectively abandoned. “If I had been in office, we would have bought the easements,” Amabile stated flatly.
The Pioneer Corridor: A Local Solution
With the state’s failure, city leaders pivoted to a locally controlled alternative: the Pioneer Corridor. Instead of waiting for a $600 million highway that would never come, they proposed widening and improving Pioneer Road—a parallel east-west route south of Highway 152—to serve as a de facto bypass for local traffic.
This plan took shape in 2016 when Merced County voters approved Measure V, a local transportation sales tax that provided $8.65 million in funding to kickstart planning. The city later secured a Caltrans grant to fund design work, and by 2020, the Pioneer Road Complete Streets Plan had been finalized.
Still, progress has been slow. Years passed with no construction. Critics worried that Pioneer Road might follow the bypass into oblivion, yet another “just over the horizon” project.
That changed on December 18, 2024.
A Turning Point: The First Major Construction Phase Approved
At its final 2024 meeting, the Los Banos City Council unanimously approved a $6.67 million construction contract with Agee Construction for the first major phase of the Pioneer Corridor project: the Ortigalita Road and Pioneer Road Intersection and Traffic Flow Improvement Project.
What This Means for Los Banos
- Construction begins in February 2025 and will last one year.
- The project will relocate underground utilities, widen the intersection, and install traffic signals to improve flow at one of the busiest choke points in town.
- This phase sets the foundation for Pioneer Road’s future widening and extension—ultimately stretching west to Highway 152 and east to Ward Road.
- The funding package includes $3.99 million in federal and state grants, administered by the Merced County Association of Governments (MCAG), with $300,000 from the city’s Traffic Impact Fee fund.
Mayor Amabile has expressed cautious optimism about the Pioneer Corridor’s potential to reshape local transportation. “This follows the plan of the corridor, which is basically a five-lane highway—two lanes each direction with a turning lane,” he explained. He envisions future expansions stretching Pioneer Road all the way from Volta Road to Ward Road, providing Los Banos with a legitimate alternative route to Highway 152.
However, he also acknowledges that this is just the beginning. “We’ll probably do this in steps and phases,” Amabile said. “It won’t be long before people start using it the way they used Highway 152, but when the traffic there becomes a Level F (e.g. the roadway operates beyond its capacity causing long delays with stop-and-go traffic), commerce stops. We have to get ahead of it”.
Will This Project Succeed Where the Bypass Failed?
While the City Council’s approval is a major win, history teaches us to remain cautiously optimistic. Pioneer Road will not be fully widened overnight—full buildout is expected to take decades. This first phase is just one piece of a larger puzzle, and future progress depends on securing additional funding.
The city must remain aggressive in pursuing grants, ensuring construction stays on schedule, and keeping the public informed. Transparency and accountability will be key to preventing delays and cost overruns—the same pitfalls that doomed the state’s bypass.
Amabile believes the key difference this time is local control. Unlike the state-led bypass, which depended on unreliable state funds, the Pioneer Corridor is a city project, meaning decisions are made at the local level. “This time, the Pioneer Corridor will be our project—managed locally, driven by the needs of our community,” he emphasized.
A Long-Awaited Step Forward
After 30 years of waiting, Los Banos is finally seeing action. The Pioneer Corridor project is not a perfect solution—it lacks the scale of the abandoned bypass—but it is a real, tangible step toward fixing the city’s congestion problem. The community should celebrate this milestone while holding city leaders accountable to ensure that this project, unlike the last one, doesn’t become another lost dream.
The road ahead is long, but at least this time, we’re moving forward.