SANDAG awarded $100M for I-805 South expansion

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The California Transportation Commission has allocated $100 million for the construction of car pool lanes on Interstate 805, between East Palomar Street and State Route 15.

Jack Dale, a member of the San Diego Association of Governments board of directors and a Santee councilman, said the timing of the award was unexpected and as a result, the project timetable could be moved up.

Dale made his remarks at a San Diego City Council hearing on Monday. The award was formally announced on Tuesday by SANDAG.

The state agency actually awarded the funds at its June 22-23 meeting in Long Beach. The agency meets monthly to dispense transportation funds in an orderly manner around the state to projects often waiting in a queue for months.

At the June meeting, $168 million was dispersed to Southern California projects and SANDAG secured about 60 percent of that.

The award comes from a $4.5 billion fund approved as Proposition 1B by California voters in 2006 for the purpose of alleviating high-congestion roadways.

The $100 million will be applied to the construction of “high occupancy vehicle” (HOV) lanes, one in each direction on the South County section of the freeway.

The first phase of the project — between SR 54 and SR 15 — is expected to be awarded to contractors in March 2012. The second phase, between East Palomar Street and SR 54 — is scheduled to go to contractors a month later, according to a SANDAG spokesman.

The lanes will be used by car pools, express buses and FasTrak account holders.

“These lanes will provide choices for drivers in South County – allowing carpoolers and transit riders to access the HOV lanes and quickly travel back and forth to downtown San Diego,” SANDAG Executive Director Gary Gallegos said.

The highway opened in 1975 and in 2006 handled 212,000 vehicle trips a day. The region’s population has doubled in that time.

I-805 is also considered a key transportation corridor for the growing cross-border commercial trucking trade.

Cross-border shipping between Mexico and California reached $4.4 billion dollars in March, the most recent month for federal statistics.

The two main entry points in California are San Ysidro and the Otay Mesa ports of entry, both easily accessed by I-805.

Overall trade with Mexico exceeded $32 billion in March, the first time Mexico-U.S. trade has broken the $30 billion mark, according to federal figures.

Besides the dedicated express lanes, the I-805 project includes several transit stations for rapid transit buses from Otay Mesa to Downtown San Diego.

The entire project carries a $1.3 billion price tag

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Posted by Eastlaketimes on Jul 2 2011. Filed under Eastlake Government, Eastlake News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry