It’s been two months since the city made over the Trancas/Soscol/Big Ranch intersection, leaving motorists suddenly unable to make turns they had practiced for decades.

As part of punching through Soscol Avenue so it connected to Trancas Street opposite Big Ranch Road, the city installed raised medians to limit turns near the intersection.

Customers at Silverado Plaza and Financial Plaza could no longer zip back and forth across Soscol. Left turns in and out of the Custom House center on Trancas were barricaded.

Warren Magee, owner of the Custom House, remembers going to dinner on a Friday night when the Trancas median was merely two lines of paint. At dawn Saturday, “this thing was here.”

Magee pointed to a raised concrete barrier as long as a football field that blocks turns at his driveway. When big rigs now deliver furniture, they obstruct traffic — and sometimes break the law — in their attempts to turn in.

Beer and soda distributors have stopped delivering to the Food Mill because turns are so tight, said Mike Reza, a Food Mill manager, who shakes his head at the intersection redesign.

“Some things you do on paper don’t work out in actual life,” Reza said of the new traffic restrictions.

“People can find us, but it’s dangerous to get out,” said Sue Dee Shenk, executive director of Napa Valley Community Housing at Five Financial Plaza.

Motorists can no longer turn north onto Soscol from Financial Plaza’s main exit, forcing many to use a formerly ignored exit behind Westamerica bank or make U-turns on Soscol, she said.

Cars making U turns at rush hour back up traffic, Shenk said. “There’s honking at them all the time. It’s a dangerous thing to do,” she said.

“I have to do things in a kind of backwards order,” said Lisa Haro, who was accustomed to visiting the Bank of America at Trancas/Soscol, then driving over to Silverado Plaza to shop.

Getting across Soscol is now so difficult she visits the businesses at Silverado Plaza first and sometimes skips Bank of America, preferring to use the bank’s downtown branch.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Haro said of the redesign. “The logic behind it, I just don’t get it.”

“All my customers are complaining,” said Terri Fahey, a clerk at Longs Drugs in Silverado Plaza. “They want to know what the heck people were thinking.”

At rush hour, vehicles stack up trying to exit Silverado Plaza onto Soscol northbound. Other motorists are using the service alley behind Silverado Plaza as a shortcut, creating conflicts with delivery trucks, said Longs manager Luis Rodrigues. “It’s a very dangerous situation,” he said.

What were they thinking?

According to Farid Javandel, the city’s traffic engineer, the changes at Trancas/Soscol are identical to turn restrictions at other high-volume intersections around town.

The new medians are similar to those at Trancas/Jefferson and Lincoln/Soscol, where businesses have fewer points of entry/egress, but traffic flow and safety are improved, he said.

These improvements were long overdue at Trancas/Soscol, where nearly 20,000 vehicles a day on Soscol meet more than 20,000 vehicles daily on Trancas, he said.

There were 29 collisions at Trancas/Soscol in 2004 and 2005, a high percentage of them head-on or broadside, Javandel said. He predicts that the new medians will lower the accident rate.

“People go, ‘I can’t get there,’” said Larry Pollard, the city’s assistant public works director, of motorist complaints. “Well, yes you can if you take a deep breath.”

“It’s a matter of getting used to things,” Javandel said. “If there is someone who drove into town for the first time, they’d navigate this without a second thought.”

Motorists squawked when median controls were installed at Trancas/Jefferson years ago, Pollard said. “Now people don’t bat an eye,” he said.

Mayor Jill Techel said she understood the public’s shock. “I think we’ve frustrated a lot of people. Change is like that,” she said.

The safety benefit makes these changes worthwhile, but the city could have done a better job informing the public and merchants of what was about to occur, Techel said.

Barry Martin, the city’s public outreach coordinator, said he met with businesses in Silverado and Financial plazas in 2003 to explain the changes, but failed to talk to the businesses in the Custom House complex.

The city accepts responsibility for creating a problem for trucks entering Custom House, Javandel said. The Custom House sign will be moved and the center’s entry altered at city expense to correct the situation, he said.

Some customers are trying to circumvent the median at Custom House by making illegal maneuvers around it, both entering and exiting the center. “We flip around to get out of here,” an employee said.

The proper way for eastbound Trancas traffic to enter Custom House is by making a U turn at Big Ranch, Javandel said. Exiting vehicles that want to go eastbound need to turn westbound, then make a U turn from the two-way center lane of Trancas or nearest intersection, he said.

Dennis Pedisich, president of Napa Community Bank, said the redesigned intersection was an overall plus for his bank. Some 10,000 northbound Soscol vehicles now arrive at Trancas directly opposite his building.

“It’s been an education process for our customers,” Pedisich said. To take the sting out of the traffic changes, the bank held weekly contests for customers who made a U turn to get there. Winners received a free lunch for two.

Frustrated motorists need to remember that U turns are legal at intersections unless they are expressly prohibited, Javandel said. Southbound Soscol vehicles can hang a U at the rear entrance to Silverado Plaza, he said.

Magee said motorists will eventually come to terms with the new turn restrictions. “I’m sure it will eventually work out, but it’s caused a headache for a lot of people,” he said. “People want to go where they want to go.”