The new signal at 2nd Street and West Texas went live on Wednesday, October 21. If you drove that stretch a few years ago, you remember five lanes built for through traffic and very little reason to slow down. That made sense once. West Texas Street was part of Highway 12 until Caltrans rerouted the highway in the mid-1990s and handed the old right-of-way to the city.
For three decades the road stayed highway-sized while serving as a local street. The City's West Texas Complete Streets Project changes that, and its October 16 update called the work "almost complete."
You don't have to guess what the City expects from it. Fairfield has already tried this once, a few blocks east, and the results are on Texas Street right now.
What actually changed between the lanes
Ghilotti Brothers won the construction contract on April 15, 2025, for $10,084,965. The City's printed schedule ran from July 2025 through July 2026, so the finishing touches are landing about a season late. Most of the money came from outside the city budget. The City lists $10.9 million in state Active Transportation Program grants and $1.37 million in Solano Transportation Authority impact fees, with SB 1 and local contributions covering the rest.
| Old West Texas | Redesigned West Texas | |
|---|---|---|
| Travel lanes | Five, highway layout | Three, complete-street design |
| Bikes | No separated bikeway | Class IV separated bikeways |
| Sidewalks | Existing width | Widened, with landscaped buffers |
| Marked crossings added | None | Signal at 2nd Street, rapid flashing beacon near 1st Street |
| Left turns, 1st to Pennsylvania | Allowed | Blocked by a raised center median |
The white-and-black posts lining the bike lanes are K71 posts. The City picked them over a raised curb because a curb would have blocked street drainage, and over standard delineators because the K71s are larger and look better.
The block that explains the median
The change drivers complain about most is the raised median between 1st Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, which stops left turns in and out of driveways on that block. Over five years of crash data, that one block accounted for 35 percent of all crashes and 65 percent of all fatalities along the entire project corridor, and many of them involved turns into or out of driveways. The block also has a school crossing.
That puts most of the corridor's worst outcomes on one short block, which is why the City treated it differently. The City also included raised medians on parts of the stretch between Beck Avenue and Fifth Street, but it singles out the 1st-to-Pennsylvania block as the one where left turns are blocked.
As for traffic, the City says its modeling, based on real-world data, shows the street can carry about as much as the old layout because each mode gets its own space and there are fewer conflict points.
The experiment Fairfield already ran
The same FAQ answers whether fewer lanes means fewer customers by pointing east. In 2022, downtown Fairfield got all-way stops, defined bike lanes and traffic calming. According to the City, that slowed traffic enough for drivers to notice the businesses they were passing, and downtown has since added seven new restaurants and seen more foot traffic. The City says outright that it expects West Texas to see similar benefits once the work is done.
The Daily Republic counted slightly differently. It reported that six restaurants opened downtown in 2024 and one later closed. Either way, it points the same direction.
The downtown changes went beyond traffic. Fairfield economic development manager Keisha Mamaril told FOX40 that phase one of the downtown revitalization finished "a year or so ago." She listed sidewalk repairs, bike lanes, string lights, a restored overhead sign, new trees that don't drop much sap, and more stop signs. The City's Downtown Streetscape page covers Pennsylvania Avenue to Jefferson Street. It describes removing the old pergolas, concrete benches and planters, replacing brick pavers with colored concrete, planting trees and installing Glashoff sculptures.
"We want people to walk and see the businesses that are here," Mamaril told FOX40.
What the 700 block looks like now
To see what the City hopes West Texas becomes, walk one downtown block. On foot, starting at the County Green:
- Dumpling House, 700 Texas Street. It took over the former Starbucks space, as the Daily Republic reported in April 2025.
- Shell's Bar & Grill, 721 Texas Street. The newest arrival held its grand opening on Monday, September 14, 2026, with Filipino-American-inspired food.
- Casa Agave, 731 Texas Street. The City lists it among participating downtown restaurants.
- The Archers Den. An indoor archery tag arena on the same block, per FOX40, and a good choice when a group wants something to do between dinner and dessert.
Shell's owner, Francis Aquino, described the goal plainly to FOX40. "We just want this to be a place of gathering," he said, adding that he was excited to partner "with all the businesses here to bring more foot traffic downtown."
Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Lisa Bonnington linked the new restaurants to the Thursday farmers market, saying shoppers can "come down and dine after they get their groceries." The 2026 market ran Thursdays from 3 to 7 p.m. at the County Green, 600 Texas Street, from May 7 through September 24. With the market over for the year, the block's restaurants now have the street's evenings to themselves.
The block is close together on purpose. Slower traffic, stop signs and string lights make a short walk easy, and a short walk is how a second stop happens. West Texas now has the same basic setup of slower lanes, wider sidewalks and a protected crossing at 2nd Street. What it doesn't have yet is the cluster of storefronts that has filled downtown.
The other end of Texas Street, November 19
The same street gets a new anchor three weeks after this post goes up. Robbieburr Berger Park and Recreation Center, at 2030 N. Texas Street, opens with a free celebration on Thursday, November 19. It's named for Fairfield's first city councilmember.
- 10:00 to 10:45 a.m.: ribbon cutting
- 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.: explore and play, with a fire truck to climb through and the Fairfield Police Department's Frosty 5-0 ice cream van
The park has courts for basketball, futsal, volleyball and pickleball, plus a running track, soccer fields and two playgrounds, one for ages 2 to 5 and one for ages 5 to 12. The recreation center was built with the First 5 Solano Children and Families Commission. It will offer early childhood and parenting education and connect families to housing, employment, food assistance and health care services, and First 5 Solano partner agencies will be there on opening day. More details are at fairfield.ca.gov/robbie.
As of the City's October 16 update, the West Texas piece was in its final stretch, and the signal at 2nd Street has been running since October 21.
When a street changes like this, the way a nearby home should be presented changes with it. If you own near West Texas or downtown and want to know how a slower street, new sidewalks and a busier 700 block affect your home's value and staging, Shandrika Powell and The Powell Team can walk the block with you. Request your free home valuation & staging plan.
