It was never a state secret that the Stockdale Highway off-ramp from the southbound lanes of Highway 99 would someday close.
But when a brief news release was dropped into the city of Bakersfield's Facebook page on Tuesday, giving just two days' notice that the busy freeway exit would be shut down permanently by 8 p.m. Thursday, local motorists seemed to come together with the same basic response.
They hated the idea.
"This is just so wrong," commented Elaine McNearney.
"Another stupid decision!" railed Randy Dodson, who used extra exclamation points to make his case.
Some pointed out that Stockdale Highway is the gateway to Cal State Bakersfield, the city's only state university.
Others noted that a major hospital, Mercy Southwest, is off Stockdale Highway, and that Kaiser Permanente's Stockdale medical offices are almost directly across the street from the doomed off-ramp.
And let's not forget In-N-Out Burger.
The fact that the southbound Ming Avenue exit — the next off-ramp south of Stockdale — is also closed (due to construction) seemed to rub salt in the wounds.
And when the news release advised motorists traveling south to use the Highway 99 off-ramps at California Avenue or White Lane, well, no one seemed to take it well, especially those who live or work along the Stockdale Highway corridor.
Although the release appeared to come from the Thomas Roads Improvement Program via the city of Bakersfield, it doesn't mean the city supported the decision to shut down the off-ramp. On the contrary.
"The permanent closure of the southbound Highway 99 off-ramp at Stockdale Highway was part of the original Thomas Roads Improvement Program plan," the city's public information officer, Joe Conroy, said in an email Wednesday.
"The timing is unfortunate and is the result of a Caltrans policy that does not allow a southbound off-ramp without a northbound off-ramp (or vice-versa).
"The city and TRIP staff vigorously challenged the policy in this case due to the timing, as the off-ramps at Ming Avenue are expected to remain closed for another four to six weeks," Conroy said. "Those efforts, however, were unsuccessful and Caltrans is requiring the closure."
Ahron Hakimi, executive director of Kern Council of Governments, which works extensively in the arena of transportation planning, agreed that shutting down the off-ramp was ultimately a Caltrans decision.
The Stockdale off-ramp is actually the last of what was always intended to be an interim, or temporary, interchange between Highway 99 and the unfinished Highway 58, which reached a dead-end at Real Road and the Wild West Shopping Center.
With the work of the Centennial Corridor well underway, the northbound 99 off-ramp to Brundage Lane and Stockdale Highway are long gone — leaving the southbound Highway 99 exit to Stockdale without its twin.
"I believe the city of Bakersfield worked up to the 11th hour asking Caltrans if this is something we could leave in place," Hakimi said of the last ramp.
Eventually, it will be replaced by a much larger ramp that will swing around and connect to the Westside Parkway, which is now westbound Highway 58.
But depending on funding and other factors, that ramp could be years in the making.