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$19 Million Allocated to Local Transportation Projects
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$19 Million Allocated to Local Transportation Projects
Cost Overruns Strike Highway 1 Work
By Michael Thomas
A grab bag of street and highway improvements are set to move forward, thanks in part to voters’ approval of the Proposition 1B transportation bond on the November ballot. The County’s Regional Transportation Commission has allocated $19 million to a multiplicity of local and regional projects, ranging from $7.5 million for a bike and pedestrian bridge over Highway 1 in Aptos to $200,000 for traffic calming medians on Clares Street in Capitola.
About $14 million went towards regional projects, including the final $2.7 million needed to extend the current Highway 1 merge lanes project from Morrissey Avenue to Soquel Avenue. An additional $4 million in new transportation funds was divided up between local cities on a per capita basis.
“All of the projects in local jurisdictions, like the Ocean Street rehabilitation [in Santa Cruz] were identified by the local jurisdictions themselves,” said RTC planner Rachel Moriconi.
That means, for example, that the City of Capitola will design its own project and manage the contracts. On Clares Street, medians with vegetation will be reconfigured to slow traffic, and sidewalks may be raised and textured for the same purpose. The project will likely be underway in March of 2008.
Improvements were also funded for State Park Drive and San Andreas Road at $150,000 each.
A portion of the new monies, about $785,000, will go towards the creation of a scenic coastal trail running the length of the Monterey Bay. That brings the total funds available for the Sanctuary Scenic Trail to $6.7 million, and RTC planners say that a consultant will be hired in the coming months to develop a Master Plan that will unify existing trials and identify new segments for construction.
“They’ve been looking at places where it can go pretty much along the coast as much as possible,” said RTC planner Karena Pushnik.
The Master Plan will take a year or so to complete and may ultimately incorporate sections of the Union Pacific rail corridor.
Pedestrian Bridge Over Highway 1 Funded
The largest chunk of funding was allocated to a bicycle and pedestrian bridge over Highway 1 at Mar Vista in Aptos. The project received $7.5 million. The environmental impact studies for the bridge are being done as part of the larger EIR for a potential carpool lane project, but the Mar Vista bridge could proceed independently of the carpool lanes being built.
Design work will begin next year with construction possible in 2010.
“With all the access [it will provide] to Mar Vista Elementary, it will be great for the people living out there,” Moriconi said.
Elsewhere on the Highway 1 corridor, the merge lane project underway near the fishhook is now fully funded for an extension from Morrissey Boulevard to Soquel Avenue. An additional $2.7 million was allocated for the extension, supplementing state and federal monies already secured for the project.
However, the RTC was forced to foot the bill for cost overruns on the existing merge lane project. The problems were largely attributed to design lapses by Caltrans, which is conducting the work.
Slabs of old concrete were found buried along the streambed in the project area and the pier footings for some of the bridge work were not sufficiently stable at their initially planned depths.
The overrun was $5.3 million and the RTC agreed to cover the whole tab with discretionary state funds that could have been allocated to any project in the County.
“I am frustrated with Caltrans that they make design mistakes and we have to pay for them,” said County Supervisor Jan Beautz.
The cost of environmental work for the potential carpool lanes has also swelled from $8 million to almost $10 million, forcing the RTC to pony up another $2 million for consultants’ work.
RTC officials said the cost overrun was due largely to project delays as consultants waited to receive new regional traffic models from the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments. Also, the RTC had asked consultants to do more design drawings on project details that community members expressed an in- terest in.
Beautz said that the consultants’ work can’t simply be shut down when they are waiting on documents.
“We’re not just getting bits and pieces of people’s time; we have people who are completely dedicated to us,” she said.
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