The idea of a busy Solano County road closure that will make things better in the long run may do little in the way of easing headaches in the short run, especially for drivers wanting to go south from — or north to — Vacaville, or to and from Travis Air Force Base or Fairfield.

But a city of Fairfield official, seeing a future outcome, looks on the bright side of a nearly two-year project that will require a 14-month closing of Peabody Road, between Vanden Road and Huntington Drive, just south of Vacaville.

“We’re going to have a little bit of pain in the beginning, so be patient,” Tom Martian, construction manager for the city of Fairfield, said about the pending closure of that stretch of Peabody, a heavily used arterial for thousands of county residents every day.

The planned June 12 closure comes as the building of the Fairfield/Vacaville Train Station and Peabody Road overpass gets underway, a $35 million enterprise that will see the road’s reopening on Aug. 14, 2016, with project’s completion in March 2017.

“Some really wonderful things will be coming out of this,” Martian, a 30-year city employee, said of the project, in the works for some two decades, requiring myriad permits and multicity agreements. Construction is funded by federal, state, regional and local tax dollars, he noted.

After the road closure, drivers, depending on their destination, will be taking one of several detours in the area.

Drivers going south from Vacaville toward Fairfield will take Cement Hill or Vanden roads. If drivers are going to the air base, they will take Cannon Road, off Vanden, to the sprawling military installation’s North Gate.

Going from the base to Vacaville, drivers will be “encouraged” to use North Gate, or, if they wish, to take Air Base Parkway to Claybank Road to Cement Hill to Peabody, said Martian.

To go to Fairfield, drivers may opt to take Cement Hill to Claybank to Air Base Parkway.

Still, emergency vehicles will be allowed to traverse the closed stretch via an access road, said Martian.

Additionally, buses taking students to several Travis Unified schools and employees who work there — at Center Elementary, Vanden High, Golden West Middle School, and the Travis Education Center — will have access in the early mornings, when classes and office hours begin, and midafternoons, when classes are dismissed, he said.

District Superintendent Kate Wren Gavlak said, “We will be encouraging everyone to take the bus.”

City public works staffers on Thursday met with Travis Unified officials to discuss the road closure and to discuss bus scheduling.

“We want to spread the message from one community to the next, so everybody is on the same page,” said Martian. “We’re starting our outreach early.”

Martian briefly described some of the major components of the project: a 40-by-800-foot center island platform, including shelters, lights, to be built on Union Pacific Railroad property; a 20-by-150-foot pedestrian underpass with stairs and an ADA ramps; six bus bays and bus shelters; two plazas; and a parking area with landscaping.

Of the roadway improvements, he noted the following: Peabody will be widened to six lanes from Vanden to Huntington, to include an overpass over the railroad tracks, with walls and an embankment; a new two-lane transit access road through the station; a 20-foot-wide temporary access road about 60 feet west of Peabody; street lights and landscaping; and two new intersections with traffic lights and “fiber optic interconnect.”

He said the existing tracks at the intersection are used by trains — passenger and freight — every 30 minutes, requiring the crossing barriers to be lowered until the trains pass.

But the new overpass will yield “a beautiful traffic flow” once the project is complete, said Martian.