Cut in Freeway Construction to Hurt San Diego

California is facing a $650-million cutback in its freeway development program over the next five years and the major casualty in San Diego will be the long-planned extension of Interstate 15 along the 40th Street corridor through Mid-City, state transportation officials say.

California Department of Transportation spokesman Dan Parker said $27 million that had been earmarked for purchase of the freeway right of way has been removed from the proposed five-year State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP).

“That doesn’t mean the project is gone,” Parker said. “It could be picked up in a future plan.”

Parker said the money was supposed to have been used to purchase the right of way along 40th Street between Interstate 8 and Interstate 805, where 15 runs through town. That leg of I-15 has been the source of considerable controversy in San Diego because the corridor has deteriorated since it was mapped several years ago for the eventual freeway extension.

Parker said the money was deleted from the proposed five-year plan after transportation officials reviewed an earlier estimate of the federal government’s contribution to the highway construction program.

“The way the budgeting process works for transportation planning, early in the year everyone involved has to make some projections based on assumptions as to how much money the federal government will be allocating for the state,” he said. “Six months later, you take another look at that and see how you are. In this instance the federal government is going to be allocating less money than we anticipated.”

Parker said the state Transportation Commission will meet in August and September to review the proposal and accept comments from the public. He said the plan could be changed after those hearings.

Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) characterized the planned deletion of the I-15 funds as “real unpleasant news.”

“That project has been planned for more than 20 years, and because of the uncertainty, nobody knows whether to put anything into their businesses, and that causes blight,” he said. “They’re asking for big trouble if they pull that out of there.”

The Legislature and state officials have known about the fund shortage since last July but have been at odds over its severity and how to handle it. Some legislative leaders are blaming the California Department of Transportation for the problem. They accuse the agency of “exaggerating” how much money was available, a charge Caltrans denies.

The Interstate 15 project is among 64 state highway projects listed as victims of the federal funding squabble. All are listed as “candidates” for delays of up to five years or longer.

Also on the list are:

- A planned high speed transitway above and on Los Angeles’ Harbor Freeway. Construction was to have started late next year on the $556-million busway extending from downtown Los Angeles to San Pedro, but it will be delayed at least until 1990-1991. The unique transitway is one of several such Los Angeles area projects, which use specially built freeway lanes for buses and car pools.

The Harbor Freeway bus and car-pool project accounts for nearly half the highway funds California is cutting from its five-year State Transportation Improvement Program because of the overestimate of federal funds.

- Three sections of the Santa Ana Freeway southeast of the San Gabriel River Freeway in Los Angeles and Orange counties. More than $13 million for right of way acquisition was in the five-year plan but it won’t be available until the early 1990s.

- A portion of the Ventura Freeway near the interchange with the San Diego Freeway, which will be delayed for up to two years. Caltrans recently identified this stretch of the Ventura and the interchange as the busiest roadways in the world.

Most of the projects, however, call for relatively small capital outlays. They range, for example, from a curve widening on Highway 1 in Mendocino County to rehabilitating a section of U.S. 101 west of Santa Barbara.

An Interstate 680 widening project east of San Francisco Bay and the Harbor Freeway transitway represent the bulk of the total cutbacks. The $350-million Interstate 680 project, designed to serve a rapidly growing region, has been proposed for a year’s delay. On the Harbor Freeway transitway, 11 separate jobs totaling $288 million would be delayed for five years.

A Caltrans budget expert said the idea was to temporarily delay the Harbor Freeway transitway and then to build it on a crash basis before 1992, when the federal interstate highway program is scheduled to end.

“When you’re short of bucks, you’ve got to look for something big to cut out,” he said.

Caltrans officials say they never considered proposing interruption of the $1.6-billion Century Freeway, a long-delayed project that includes a transitway. This is the biggest freeway project now under way in the state.

While the California Transportation Commission already has adopted the state’s overall $12.7-billion five-year highway program, the projects proposed for delay are still under study by various agencies and affected communities. The commission, which will make a final decision at its September meeting, is expected to go along with the cuts recommended by Caltrans.

State transportation officials pointed out that while the $650 million in cutbacks represents a sizable portion of the state’s annual $2-billion highway budget, its impact over five years is substantially softened. At the same time, they said, the figure could shoot up or drop dramatically, depending on congressional actions, the economy and other factors.

Although some state legislators disagreed, the root of the funding problem, a commission spokesman said, is the state’s spending authority for federal highway funds.

Some legislators have criticized the Deukmejian Administration for underestimating the amount of federal highway money that would be available to California.

A few days ago, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, attacked what he called the Administration’s “over-programming” tactics, warning that the proposed highway delays actually will end up costing the state $1.2 billion.

“As a result of exaggerating the funding available, no new projects can be added until after 1991,” the assemblyman said in a memorandum to the Legislature. “By creating these illusions, public expectations that their streets and roads will be fixed or built are dashed.”

Some Administration critics also view the proposed highway cutbacks as a partial failure by the Administration to carry out its promise of an accelerated freeway-highway building program.

However, a Caltrans spokesman brushed aside the charges, noting that three times more money is being spent now on freeway construction than in the last year of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s Administration. At that time, he said, the construction budget was $325 million; now it is more than $1 billion.

The spokesman, Gene Berthelsen, Caltrans chief of communications, also questioned Katz’s use of such words as “exaggerating” and “illusions.”

“ ‘Exaggerating’ is a loaded word,” he said. “Our forecast was higher last year but now we’ve got new information. I don’t see how you can exaggerate a forecast. As for ‘illusions,’ it’s true that some projects are going to be delayed, but one could hardly call between $7 billion and $8 billion (the amount of construction in the five-year program) an illusion.”