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San Luis Obispo City Council moves forward on Prado Road bridge project

November 10, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

For decades, the City of San Luis Obispo has considered a bridge over Highway 101 at Prado Road a needed capital improvement project and a major city goal.

The SLO City Council voted last week to move forward with cost-saving design changes for the Prado Road interchange and bridge projects. The updated design will reduce overall construction costs by about $20 million, bringing the total estimated cost to roughly $127 million.

The updated plan includes two vehicle traffic lanes, two bike lanes and two walking paths on the bridge.

The interchange project will extend Prado Road over Highway 101 to Dalidio Drive, realign Elks Lane, and add a northbound auxiliary lane to Madonna Road. The improvements are expected to relieve congestion and improve emergency access across the city.

Currently, construction costs are to be paid by the city and the city’s regional partners including: San Luis Obispo County, San Luis Obispo Council of Governments, as well as the San Luis Ranch development.

The city anticipates construction will begin in 2029.

 


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Just look at all the new places the homeless can move into, lots of space under all the structures.


5

So many on and off ramps and no expressways.


4

The Prado Rd overpass has been needed for quite some time, anyone with working Spidey senses would know that:)

Previous Councils tried to make it unfeasible by building the Damon Garcia Sports complex, Prado needs to connect to Broad St, that’s the biggest traffic circulation problem in the City.

Broad St. needs to become connected to the Freeway!!!


9

This project gets more expensive each time it’s presented. It appears the city plans to finance $65 million out of the estimated $127million cost. It will probably be higher than that in a few years when they plan on starting construction, the date of which keeps getting pushed further out. So how will the city obtain the financing and how will the payments be made? Will there be ANOTHER tax increase? If so, will the cost be worth the benefit? The city has a huge pension debt that they can’t keep up with, so adding another huge loan won’t help our financial condition. The City Manager has said there’s no “extra” money for anything in the current budget and there will be an even bigger short-fall next budget cycle.


20

That will make it so much easier to get your “borrowed” Target shopping cart to the other side of town! Thank you, SLO


10

All this does, is move the heavy traffic “over there”. It will do nothing for overall traffic congestion. Curious how much green paint will be allocated for the bicycles that will inevitably fly into traffic anyway.


The city failed for the last 50 years to do anything about infrastructure, while growing far beyond our means. Now we are paying the price for it.


11

Madonna rd exit bridge is about .5 miles down the road from there… Seems like a huge expense to save not very much time for not very many people :/ That new housing etc may have brought heavier traffic I am unaware of… but still.


7

An eighth of a billion dollars. Wow. But given how these government construction projects go, it’ll likely be a quarter billion.


20

When your spending tax payer dollars or thinking about selling “bonds” , there is no price too high!


11