Amador County – Amador County Transportation Commission on Wednesday (Jan. 18) will consider staff recommendations to request qualification statements for a through-town improvement project for Highway 88 in Pine Grove.
ACTC Program Manager Neil Peacock in a Jan. 11 letter to Commissioners said ACTC has $2 million for the project, and recommended ACTC “authorize staff to circulate a Request For Qualifications, evaluate proposals, conduct interviews, identify the highest ranked firm, and authorize the Consultant Selection Committee to negotiate a draft Scope of Work for final refinement of the ‘constrained through town’ alternative and the completion of the Project Approval-Environmental Document phase, if so desired.”
Peacock said “conferred with Caltrans members of the Project Development Team” regarding a “reasonable range of alternatives,” as discussed by ACTC Dec. 14. Peacock said he conveyed the “Commission’s concerns” that “it would be financially imprudent to invest further expenditures on refining and analyzing the five-lane capacity-expansion alternative when it far exceeds the reasonably foreseeable funding available for the project and when it has been the focus of consistent local opposition due to anticipated community impacts.”
He told Caltrans of the recent end of the Tri-County Partnership with Alpine and Calaveras, and regional leveraging funds. Peacock said “staff also clearly laid out the ACTC’s proposed approach to addressing” concerns that the “three-lane through-town alternative did not appear to meet the project’s Purpose & Need.”
Peacock said staff was able to explain that both bypass and five-lane alternatives were “simply not financially viable based on relevant revenue projections” and the latter was “strongly recommended for elimination” by ACTC as project sponsor. He addressed concerns by describing “additional refinements ACTC would undertake” to meet Purpose & Need.
The Project Design Team discussed “detailed design components” options “to alleviate congestion such as access consolidation combined with a raised median with channelized turn pockets, synchronized signal timing” and “providing turn lanes and passing capacity where sufficient Right-of-Way exists,” Peacock said. The Team also “discussed methods to measure the project’s operational outcome against the Purpse & Need, such as using travel-time savings and a Level of Service ‘deficiency horizon,’ in order to evaluate whether or not the refined alternative would alleviate congestion as required.”
Based on discussions, Peacock said, the Project Design Team “agreed to eliminate the five-lane alternative and explore additional refinements to the three-lane alternative in a way that accommodates the corridor’s constraints yet realizes tangible traffic benefits and alleviates congestion as required by the project’s Purpose & Need.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
