The fall quarter will open with a new Memorial Union bus terminal and a realigned Garrod Drive leading to veterinary medicine buildings in the Health Sciences District.

The latter project will require detours next week: Thursday and Friday, Sept. 25 and 26. Details below.

Bus terminal — It is set to open Monday, Sept. 29, after being closed all summer for reconstruction. The $3.9 million project also includes a rebuilt Howard Way, which connects Russell Boulevard to the bus terminal and the north entry parking garage.

The new road and terminal surface have been built stronger, to accommodate today’s larger buses (the old terminal dated back to the 1970s). The new terminal is bigger, too, with a new layout that will provide curbside entry and exit for all buses, to keep passengers from having to walk amid bus traffic.

Take note: New gates will limit access to buses and other authorized vehicles. If you’re dropping someone off or picking up someone, you’ll need to use the new turnaround on Tennis Court Lane.

Unitrans service changes for 2014-15 take effect Monday, Sept. 29. At that time, routes B, E, F, G, K, M, P, Q will again be running from the MU Terminal. New printed schedules are due to be available on buses by Monday (Sept. 22). Read more.

Earlier coverage: “MU Terminal gets re-do while buses go elsewhere this summer,” Dateline UC Davis, June 11, 2014

Garrod Drive — It’s getting a new curve that will put the road directly in front of Veterinary Medicine 3B, a research building that opened last year in the Health Sciences District. The old section of road farther south is coming out to make way for the planned construction of an administration building for the School of Veterinary Medicine.

The “new” Garrod Drive will lead directly to Parking Lot 50 east of the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Or, if you turn left, you’ll be on the existing Garrod that wraps around the veterinary medicine complex to the south.

With the detours in place on Sept. 25 and 26, the contractor will connect Garrod’s new curve to the existing road. Inbound traffic from La Rue Road will be diverted onto a temporary, gravel road to reach the veterinary medicine complex, and outbound traffic will be rerouted around the Health Sciences District, to Hutchison Drive near Aggie Stadium. See map.

The newly aligned Garrod Drive is due to be open on Saturday, Sept. 27. Construction, however, will continue until January on other parts of the project: parking, a pedestrian-bike path and stormwater retention basins.

The plan shows, about midway through the new curve on Garrod, an entrance to a new parking area that connects to the Putah Creek Lodge parking lot — boosting its size from 64 spaces to about 150.

When the expanded parking lot is completed, Garrod Drive will be your only way in and out. In other words: You won’t use Putah Creek Lodge Drive anymore to get to the Putah Creek Lodge parking lot.

Putah Creek Lodge Drive will remain open between La Rue Road and the land bridge that provides access to the lodge (for catering trucks, for example), but beyond there, Putah Creek Lodge Drive will be reserved for pedestrians and bicyclists, and UC Davis service vehicles.

The pedestrian-bike path — separated from auto traffic — will not end there: It will be extended west to Garrod Road, through open space north of the Arboretum Teaching Nursery — providing a more direct route between the central campus and the Health Sciences District.

The project also includes ground preparation for the veterinary medicine’s new administration building.

Project cost is $3.9 million, paid by Transportation and Parking Services, the School of Veterinary Medicine, and the arboretum.

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