Backlog of Needed Road Repairs Is Mounting : Transportation: Dozens of improvements are delayed due to lack of funds. Officials say problems ignored today may mean big trouble in future.

Each day, motorists crawl down torn-up California 118 through Saticoy, sitting in stalled traffic as road crews labor to complete a project launched more than a decade ago.

Across the county, commuters inch along the Moorpark Freeway, narrowed to one lane in each direction so that workers can roll fresh asphalt onto off-ramps.

That’s the good news.

These traffic tangles will end with the completion of both projects, scheduled later this summer.

But traffic is increasing throughout the county, adding strain to the area’s aging road system, which county transportation leaders don’t have the funds to ease.

By the end of this year, more than 100 miles of worn-down roadways throughout Ventura County will go unrepaired.

Projects to widen dozens of jammed intersections will be delayed and plans to install scores of stoplights postponed. Streets identified as among the most congested in the county may languish for 30 years or more before money to fix them becomes available.

While the county’s infrastructure may appear mostly trouble-free to the average motorist, transportation experts warn that cracks and traffic snarls barely noticeable today are the harbingers of more serious problems.

City and county officials warn that it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain aging road systems as public transit programs are poised to compete for an already limited pool of funds.

They predict that even with careful planning, traffic is going to get worse before it gets better.

About 144,000 vehicles a day crossed the county line east of Thousand Oaks on the Ventura Freeway in 1989, the last time the state counted traffic there. By 2010, that number--which includes traffic into and out of the county--will jump to 199,000, according to the California Department of Transportation.

“Ventura County has done a good job of controlling growth, so congestion here is not as bad as in other parts of Southern California,” said Chris Stephens, a planner for the Ventura County Transportation Commission. “The problem is that even with limited future growth, we’re going to see an increase in cars on the road and all of the problems that brings.”

During the past 20 years, Ventura County’s population has nearly doubled and traffic has increased even more.

From 1980 to 1990, the number of miles driven each day in Ventura County jumped 61%, according to Caltrans. Over the same period, the number of new miles of roadway increased by 8% and funding for transportation inched up just 3%.

Meanwhile, four years ago, the state took control of millions of dollars in fines and forfeiture fees that cities depended on to boost their road revenue.

“It used to be when our Police Department arrested a drunk driver, we could count on $1,000 in fines that would go right to roads,” said Norm Wilkinson, Santa Paula’s director of public works. “Now all we get is the bill for the booking fee, and the city streets wait another year.”

Nearly 60 streets in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Oxnard, Ventura, Camarillo and Port Hueneme must be widened or repaved to avoid increased congestion, city officials say.

However, most city and county officials say they don’t have enough money for repairs, let alone road improvements.

“We are basically hanging on by our teeth,” said Art Goulet, the county’s public works director. “We look at all of the projects that need doing, and then we put most of them off for another year.”

Yet prolonged delays can cause the costs of repair to skyrocket.

A quick patch job on a mile of damaged roadway costs about $80,000. If the work is postponed and the problem worsens, the costs of completely stripping and repaving that same stretch runs about $800,000.

“What happens is we will get to a point where the roads are so bad that a few patches are not going to do the trick,” Ventura Traffic Engineer Nazir Lalani said. “We are going to wind up with major road repair projects on our hands and no money to fix them.”

As for highways, a financial crisis at Caltrans will likely force delays in planned projects throughout the state.

Caltrans announced in August that unless the funding picture improves, many projects planned for construction after 1995 will have to be downsized, delayed or eliminated.

“We’re looking at a statewide crunch, which means everybody is going to suffer,” said Jerry Baxter, director of Caltrans District No. 7, which includes Ventura and Los Angeles counties. “For Ventura County, it might mean some projects don’t get done.”

In the past, a planning document called the State Transportation Improvement Program provided a detailed blueprint of all the major highway and rail projects to be undertaken by Caltrans over a seven-year period.

In Ventura County, the Transportation Commission has listed the top 15 highway projects. Seven are included in the Caltrans blueprint.

Until last year, projects on the list were virtually assured of being completed. Now, a decline in state gas tax revenue and federal funding means that the future of those projects is uncertain.

Among the jeopardized projects are the widening of the Ventura Freeway from Vineyard Avenue to Johnson Drive, the construction of a new Seaward Avenue bridge and the widening of the Moorpark Freeway from Moorpark to Thousand Oaks.

“Beyond the first few projects on the list, it’s really a wish list,” Stephens said. “It’s hard to say when we’ll be able to tackle many of those projects.”

A project to widen California 33 through Casitas Springs is scheduled for the year 2023.

“We’re going to be in for some very long waits,” said Ginger Gherardi, executive director of the county’s Transportation Commission. “And the costs are just going to keep going up.”

Adding to the concern are new state and federal regulations that require counties every two years to evaluate congestion levels and submit plans to reduce traffic tie-ups or risk losing millions of dollars in transportation funding. Ventura County stands to lose up to $6.2 million a year if it fails to submit the plan.

The Congestion Management Plan provides the county with a standardized way to measure traffic levels and the impact of new development on traffic.

Under the plan, roads throughout the county are graded, like schoolwork, on an A-through-F system. A’s are granted to perfectly free-flowing roads and Fs to poorly functioning areas that suffer rush-hour traffic jams.

The most recent plan, completed in December, gives flunking grades to six spots throughout the county and assigns dates for fixing the problems.

The problem spots are California 33 through Casitas Springs, the Ventura Freeway at Hampshire Road in Thousand Oaks, the intersection of Tierra Rejada and Moorpark roads in Moorpark, High Street in Moorpark, California 118 in Saticoy, and the three-way intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Saviers and Wooley roads in Oxnard.

The completion last fall of a $39-million connector linking the Simi Valley and Moorpark freeways has relieved much of the congestion on High Street, and Caltrans is working to complete an overhaul of California 118 and construction of a new Saticoy Bridge by August.

“These are good projects that are going to be a big help in relieving congestion,” Baxter said. “But some of these other projects are going to wait a long time for funding.”

With funding a major source of delays, cities are looking for other ways to speed up road projects.

Oxnard Transportation Manager Samia Maximous said it can take years to get a project through Caltrans bureaucracy, before ground is even broken for the planned work.

But according to Baxter, little can be done to eliminate the delays, which are just a part of the way government works.

“There are a lot of precautions you have to take, a lot of guidelines to follow,” he said. “It’s just what you have to deal with when you deal with government. So what?”

Ken Gilbert, Moorpark’s public works director, gave a recent example of where Caltrans slowed a project.

Moorpark was planning to install new storm drains on Moorpark Avenue, also known as California 23.

But when Moorpark asked Caltrans to pick up part of the cost, the agency would not pay until it had determined how much of the runoff came from city development. After several months of delays and a hydrology study, Caltrans ended up paying 40%.

“They could have just estimated rather than going through the study,” Gilbert said. “But that’s not the way they do things. You’ve just got to be patient and push them to get things done.”

Caltrans is not the only culprit when projects get bogged down, Baxter said.

“We’ve had tons of problems with joint projects with cities where we’re ready to go, but the city can’t come up with its share of the funding, so the project goes on the shelf,” the Caltrans official said. “The pendulum swings both ways.”

Hoping to improve communication with cities and help speed up projects, Caltrans several years ago opened a district office in Ventura.

City officials said relations with the agency since then have improved somewhat, but problems persist.

“I am extremely pleased with dealing with the satellite office,” Ojai Public Works Director Stan Moore said. “But it’s frustrating sometimes that Caltrans is so big that they don’t bother to tell their own people what is going on.”

In April, during Ojai’s 95th annual tennis tournament, Moore received several calls from angry residents complaining about traffic backups on California 150, the main artery through town.

Caltrans had launched a paving project.

“We were in the middle of this major event and, all of a sudden, Caltrans is out there doing crack filling,” Moore said. “They didn’t bother to tell anybody in the city, and it was a real hassle for everyone.”

Caltrans has since sent Moore a letter outlining its plans for the project.

Even the most amicable of relations between the cities, the county and Caltrans will not bring more money to Ventura County, and cities continue to fret over how they will fund roadway projects.

While cities and counties throughout California are facing the same federal funding shortages, Ventura County is the most populous county in the state without a portion of its local sales tax devoted to transportation.

In 1990, Ventura County voters overwhelmingly defeated a sales-tax measure. In November, the measure will appear on the ballot for a second time.

In the meantime, much to the dismay of public works directors and traffic engineers seeking more funds for roads, the county’s Transportation Commission has chosen to tackle the congestion problem from another angle: by beefing up public transportation.

In the past two years, the commission has added Metrolink commuter rail service and, starting July 5, the commission and the cities will launch an unprecedented countywide bus service.

“The fact is, no matter how much we improve our roadways, we are not going to be able to avoid the problem of congestion,” the commission’s Stephens said. “The solution is to drive less, and that raises the need for alternatives.”

Tuesday: The struggle to get commuters out of their cars and onto Metrolink.

Top 15 Transportation Projects

The Ventura County Transportation Commission has identified the county’s most urgently needed projects through 2023. The first seven projects have been approved for funding by the California Transportation Commission, while the remaining projects have yet to receive state funding approval.

Total cost Targeted start in millions of construction 1. California 126 from Fillmore to the Los Angeles County line* $35.6 1991 2. Moorpark-Simi Valley Freeway connector** $39.0 1992 3. California 118 from the Santa Paula Freeway to Vineyard Avenue*** $22.1 1992 4. Ventura Freeway from Vineyard Avenue to Johnson Drive $57.6 1996 5. Ventura Freeway at Seaward Avenue $9.0 1997 6. Pacific Coast Highway at Pleasant $36.0 1997 Valley Road 7. Ventura Freeway at Lewis Road $35.5 1999 8. Simi Valley Freeway at Tapo Canyon $32.0 2004 Road to the Los Angeles County line 9. Moorpark Freeway from Ventura Freeway $18.8 2006 to Simi Valley Freeway 10. California 118 from the Santa Clara $75.0 2011 River to Moorpark 11. Simi Valley Freeway at New Los $54.6 2016 Angeles Avenue to Tapo Canyon Road 12. Ventura Freeway at Carmen Drive $11.9 2018 13. Ventura Freeway at Borchard Road $3.5 2018 14. Ventura Freeway at Victoria Avenue $7.0 2020 15. California 33--Casitas bypass $30.0 2023

* Project under way and scheduled for completion in 1995.

** Project completed in October, 1993.

*** Project under way and scheduled for completion in August.

Source: Ventura County Transportation Commission

Saticoy Bridge Project

This timeline gives a step-by-step look at one Caltrans project, from conception to near-completion:

* 1983: Caltrans reports that each day the rickety Saticoy Bridge handles more than 27,000 cars and trucks, the highest traffic volume on any two-lane state highway in Ventura County.

A Caltrans environmental study finds the 34-year-old bridge “structurally deficient as well as functionally obsolete.”

Caltrans proposes a project to:

--Tear down the old two-lane Saticoy Bridge and replace it with a modern, four-lane span.

--Widen 2.3 miles of highway on either side of the bridge from two to four lanes, from the interchange of California 118 and the Santa Paula Freeway to Vineyard Avenue.

--Build a new, direct link between the Wells Road section of California 118 and the Los Angeles Avenue section of the route, eliminating a dogleg that causes traffic backups as drivers are forced to wind through the heart of Saticoy.

Projected cost: $17 million. The estimated year state funding is expected to be available: 1987. Year the bridge is scheduled for completion: 1990.

* 1984: Public hearing in Saticoy on the project draws more than 150 residents, who raise concerns about noise, traffic and plans by Caltrans to condemn local businesses to make room for the new road.

* 1985: A $300-million shortfall in the state’s $5.3-billion highway project fund forces Caltrans to delay the project indefinitely.

* 1989: Ventura County Transportation Commission reschedules project for construction beginning in 1992. Estimated cost increases to $21.85 million.

* 1990: In January, Saticoy residents join forces to protest delays, saying the bridge is unsafe and needs immediate repairs. Blaming rising land prices, Caltrans in December increases estimated cost of Saticoy project to $30 million.

* 1991: In response to the increased cost and delays in buying rights of way, Caltrans splits the project into two parts.

--Phase One includes construction of the new bridge and road widening. Estimated cost: $18 million.

--Phase Two entails adding a new California 118 link. Caltrans condemns 7 businesses to make room for the new stretch of roadway. Estimated cost of Phase Two: $12 million.

* 1992: Nine years after the project was conceived, work begins on Phase One. At the urging of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Caltrans spends $12,000 on 12-foot-high mesh screens to hang from the bottom of the old bridge deck to shield nesting swallows from construction work. Overall, bids come in lower than expected because of the recession. Cost of Phase One drops to $13.1 million.

* 1993: Ten years after the project was conceived, work begins on Phase Two. Recession lowers cost to $9 million.

* Aug. 6, 1994: Entire project scheduled for completion, four years behind schedule and $5.1 million over original budget.

Source: Caltrans