Amador County – Amador County Transportation Commission approved environmental and design work for the Pine Grove Corridor Improvement Project last week and discussed how the project will be undertaken simultaneously to put actual details of the project into the environmental documents.

Dokken Engineering President Richard Liptak said they plan to have four public meetings to get input from the public whose 90 properties line Highway 88, where the project design will look for ways to improve the existing three-lanes, and enhance the flow of traffic.

Supervisor Richard Forster asked how they would handle landowners who were resistant. Liptak said they will listen. He said “we still want to help those people even if they don’t like the project.” Every project has it, and there are people who say they have never heard of this project before and yet there is a folder sitting there documenting the engineers’ visits with them.

Supervisor John Plasse asked about “deliverables” in the scope of Dokken’s work. Liptak said those will be owner’s exhibits of meetings with the landowners, showing them maps lines of their properties, so they can see where the line goes, and where they actually park on the state right-of-way. Resistant people see their neighbor’s rendering and are enticed to see their own map lines.

Liptak said traffic simulation in 3-D by Fehr & Peers is good for the public because they can come and see what the project will look like. Fehr & Peers “can take snapshots of traffic,” and engineering can show what it looks like.

The environmental testing will include a geotechnical “pavement deflection test,” where a big hammer hits the pavement to measure how far it moves, and gauge its stability. He said it is the only way Caltrans will agree to rehab of existing highway. It will save millions, and keeps them from having to remove the whole road.

If the road passes the deflection test, it can be grinded down two inches and repaved with two inches of new asphalt. Liptak said the deflection testing saved about $5 million on a road project Dokken engineered in Kings Beach. He said it is a test not needed for the “Project Approval and Environmental Design” stage, but without it, Caltrans would require gutting out the whole road.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.