Calaveras Bypass Cost Surge Will Impact Amador County Transportation Dollars

Wednesday, 13 December 2006 00:35

Calaveras Bypass Cost Surge Will Impact Amador County Transportation Dollars

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Amador, Calaveras and Alpine County Taxpayers will pay an additional $12.8 million for the Highway 4 bypass around Angels Camp, a 27 percent price increase that just became widely known last week when state transportation officials began breaking the news to local planners. According to Charles Field, the Executive Director of the Amador County Transportation Commission, three fourths of this $12.8 million cost increase, or around 9.8 million dollars, will come out of tri-county shares of available State funds. This means, according to Field, that Amador as well as Calaveras and Alpine, will have to wait that much longer to get any funding for major State Highway widening or bypass projects. The earliest date of funds availability being 2012 or possibly even later.

The total cost to Amador County will be about 4 million dollars to both Amador and Calaveras Counties and about 1 million to Alpine. Construction on the Hwy 4 bypass of historic downtown Angels Camp is still due to begin this summer. California Department of Transportation officials said in their report to local officials that much of the increase, $7.75million, is because of higher than expected costs for purchasing the property, or right of ways, from property owners through the ranchland northeast of Angels Camp. The balance of the increase is from rising construction costs, according to the Caltrans report. The increase brings the estimated cost for the 2.4-mile bypass to $60.2 million, up from $47.4 million compared to the total cost of the Hwy 49 bypass, now projected at 45 million dollars , plus or minus afew.

The transportation commissions in the three counties, Calaveras, Amador and Alpine, must all approve the increase, because of an agreement reached some years ago. The agreement pooled the three counties funds for major transportation projects. This was necessary to attract the state funding by the California transportation Commission. Field states The ACTC should be very concerned and will discuss this at their next meeting, Wednesday night December 20, 7:00 pm in the BOS chambers. "Nine months ago, the cost of doing the bypass was $37 million,” Dorian Faught told the Stockton Record. Faught is a member of the Calaveras Council of Governments, the transportation planning agency for Calaveras County.

"We can't hardly let the ink dry on the piece of paper before it goes up again. Faught was the only member of the Calaveras Council of Governments to vote against the increase, not because he opposes the bypass but because he feels the increase rewards Caltrans for what he sees as mismanaging the project. "The Tri-Counties are approximately $14million borrowed into the future to do all of their projects," said Scott Maas, the consultant who manages highway projects for the three counties. Maas said that figure includes overruns on other projects, such as the soon-to-be-completed Sutter-Amador bypass on Highway 49 north of Jackson.