Caltrans Chief Savors Measure M Challenge

As a young engineer with the state highway division back in the 1950s, Russell Lightcap had a goal: to build a steel bridge over a body of water. Young engineers dream of such things, of erecting sweeping structures under challenging conditions. Many never get the chance.

Lightcap told his boss of his wish, and the man eventually came through with a project. But it was hardly glamorous. “It’s in Hoopa,” the boss said.

“Where?” Lightcap asked.

The boss explained that Hoopa was a small Indian reservation in the outback northeast of Eureka. In 1954 the Trinity River had swollen over its banks, washing out the existing 800-foot-long bridge. The state wanted a replacement as fast as possible.

Out in the middle of nowhere, Lightcap embraced the challenge with gusto. He lived in a cramped trailer for months and guided the project to completion in less than a year. The bridge still stands, and Lightcap will occasionally swing by for a visit and a few memories if he’s anywhere near.

Now a seasoned veteran of 41 years with the California Department of Transportation, Lightcap faces a challenge that makes that first steel span seem almost like Tinker Toys. He has been handed the reins as director of the Caltrans Orange County office just as local transportation authorities are embarking on the most ambitious effort in recent history to upgrade the region’s vast network of roads, freeways and rail lines.

With the passage of Measure M, the county’s new, $3-billion transportation financing program, Orange County is expected to have a bigger road construction budget than some states, and Lightcap will be responsible for shepherding the bulk of that work.

There may not be too many people better suited for the job. Lightcap has helped build roads and bridges in areas from San Diego to California’s northern reaches. He has held more than a dozen different posts at Caltrans through the years, ending with chief of the branch in Sacramento responsible for outlining highway funding throughout California.

Indeed, it is Lightcap’s close ties to the agency’s upper echelon in Sacramento that may prove particularly advantageous in the coming months as the local district gears up for an array of new projects, ranging from an innovative tollway in the median of the Riverside Freeway to reconstruction of the traffic-choked confluence of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways, the infamous El Toro Y.

“I think the fact that Russ was an insider in Sacramento will be a real advantage for us,” said Stanley T. Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Transportation Commission. “It will help in the competition for money for new projects, it will help in knowing how to get into the budget, in knowing what kinds of arguments will work in Sacramento.”

Moreover, Lightcap has already begun to forge a reputation in Orange County as a can-do administrator who makes a point of ensuring that road projects are delivered both on time and on budget.

“He’s right on top of project delivery,” Oftelie said. “Keith (McKean, whose retirement led to Lightcap’s appointment) had a lot of strengths, but project delivery wasn’t one of them. That’s a particular strength of Russ. He’s going to be a real asset.”

Jerry Russell, the chief state construction engineer for Caltrans in Sacramento, has known Lightcap about as long as anyone.

“You’ve got to put me down on the list of his admirers,” Russell said. “Russ is quiet. He doesn’t stand out in a crowd, he doesn’t say a whole lot. But he has the respect of the organization, and people come to appreciate his convictions and courage. You don’t just blow him over by stampeding him with words.”

For his part, Lightcap sees the Orange County job as a fitting step in a career that has spanned four decades, making him one of the most senior engineers at Caltrans.

“Orange County is a relatively small district, but it’s very strategic, and we have things going on that many of the other areas don’t,” said Lightcap, who assumed his post in September. “With Measure M passing, there’s a great expection that something is going to be done. That’s a challenge all of us face.”

With his silver hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, the avuncular Lightcap hardly looks the part of a hard-charging executive ready to take on the daunting transportation problems of a county that in years past has all too often gone begging at the state funding trough.

When he first arrived to assume his new post, Lightcap was a virtual unknown to most of the local transportation hierarchy. Several expressed surprise that someone of Lightcap’s age--he is 64--was appointed to the post, worrying privately that the veteran engineer would be a caretaker administrator.

Since then, those same local officials say Lightcap has proven to be anything but a man waiting out the days until retirement.

As one local transportation official put it, Lightcap has shown a profound ability to “cut through the crap” that normally laces the Caltrans bureaucracy and can sometimes make dealing with the agency an onerous chore.

Insiders say Caltrans Director Robert Best had to actively seek out and persuade Lightcap to take the Orange County post. Best reportedly was not enamored of the initial list of candidates for the job, which the director saw as a key position because of the plethora of projects on tap. Moreover, the Deukmejian Administration was eager to ensure that Orange County’s solidly Republican electorate was kept happy by putting in a director who could deliver the goods.

The move also had some pluses for Lightcap’s family life. His daughter, Candace, and two grandchildren live in Orange County.

“I was not put here to be a caretaker,” Lightcap said. “I want to see these projects out on time, on schedule and within cost. . . . My approach is I like to know what’s happening, what the problem is, and then let’s deal with it.”

Lightcap, a native of a small farming community in central Illinois, said he followed the century-old advice of Horace Greeley to “Go West, young man!” and rode a bus to California soon after he graduated with his engineering degree from the University of Illinois.

He caught on immediately with Caltrans, taking a job in rain-swept Eureka. Through his career at the agency, Lightcap has held 14 different positions. He has overseen a variety of bridge projects. He has also been the chief in charge of the toll operations on the Bay Area bridges.

In the early 1970s, he took over responsibilities for the state’s entire fleet of Caltrans vehicles, everything from the bright orange maintenance trucks to snowplows in the Sierra. Those were the days of the Arab oil embargo, and Lightcap had to prove himself adept at stretching what fuel was available to power the work vehicles.

Later he became director of the Caltrans district in Fresno and in 1981 moved on to the top spot in the San Diego office, helping lay the groundwork for the successful regional trolley operation as well as freeway widening work on Interstate 15.

In 1983, Lightcap moved back to Sacramento, where he held a variety of posts before being appointed in 1987 as chief of the state division of project development, an umbrella wing that has responsibility over the Caltrans budget for large projects.

Lightcap admits he doesn’t like to spend too much time standing still.

“I like to do different things,” he said. “If I’m in one place too long I get a little antsy.”

Lightcap also acknowledges he has little stomach for red tape.

“I want us as an organization to be responsive,” Lightcap said. “I don’t want us to give bureaucratic answers. I get angry myself with others when I get bureaucratic responses.”

He has several goals--to see the district become increasingly “high-tech” by employing more computer aids such as the new traffic operations center; to encourage the proliferation of “privatization” projects such as the toll roads along the Riverside Freeway and another running down the Santa Ana River, and to improve the efficiency of an organization that some critics say delivers too few miles of road for the money.

But more than anything, Lightcap seems focused on ensuring that the key projects in Orange County--the Santa Ana Freeway widening, the El Toro Y reconstruction, the car-pool lanes on the Orange Freeway among others--are delivered to a public that is clamoring for relief.

“Yes,” he said, “there is an urgency here to get this work done now. “