Caltrans to Reveal Whether It Will Fund Freeway Sound Wall : Thousand Oaks: The state is scheduled to announce tonight if it will pay for a structure to reduce traffic noise in the Conejo Oaks neighborhood.

Caltrans engineers say there is no question that a sound wall would stifle the steady roar of traffic noise pouring into the Conejo Oaks neighborhood from the adjacent Moorpark Freeway.

Whether the budget-strapped state agency will pay to build a sound wall in the 30-year-old Thousand Oaks neighborhood is an entirely different question.

At tonight’s Thousand Oaks City Council meeting, state Department of Transportation officials will reveal the answer to council members and anxious residents, some of whom have been waiting since 1971 for relief from the noise.

Construction of the 2,000-foot-long wall has become a $600,000 question for Thousand Oaks. The city decided in March it wants the wall and is willing to pay the more than half-million-dollar costs from a fund set aside for noise abatement along the Moorpark Freeway.

But city officials have hoped all along that Caltrans would reimburse them for the construction costs. Caltrans engineer Stephen Pang said Monday that the agency would not be able to make any payments to the city until at least the year 2016, and that payment would not include interest, despite the two-decade wait.

Pang could not confirm whether the agency will agree to pay the construction costs. He said Caltrans is still mulling over the neighborhood’s eligibility for a sound wall.

Mayor Jaime Zukowski said she and other city officials had long believed that Caltrans had already approved the sound wall project, but that it was simply low on their list of priorities.

“I’m very surprised to hear that the criteria should now be in question,” Zukowski said. “Because there is no question at all that decibel reduction is needed.”

That’s true, Pang said. Tests conducted in the neighborhood over the last few months show noise levels exceeding Caltrans’ acceptable level of 67 decibels. And the engineers used computer models to determine that traffic noise will be four or five decibels higher in 20 years.

While traffic noise along the four-mile stretch of the Moorpark Freeway that cuts through Thousand Oaks is high, engineers say it is particularly concentrated in a neighborhood of about 50 homes in an older development called Conejo Oaks. Because of the height of the freeway and the way it curves over Paige Lane, noise projects directly into the back yards of houses from La Jolla Drive to La Granada Drive.

“But the noise level in Thousand Oaks is not that bad compared to other places,” Pang said. “On the Golden State Freeway there are five or six lanes of traffic and a high percentage of trucks. We really have a lot of noise problems there. California 23 [the Moorpark Freeway] is low on our priority list.”

The quickest way for Thousand Oaks to quiet the din bothering Conejo Oaks residents is to build the wall itself, Pang said.

“The city has plenty of money to pay for it,” he said.

He said Caltrans engineers will work with city officials to make sure the wall is up to the agency’s standards, because it will be built on a right-of-way owned by Caltrans. And the city will be able to choose from either Spanish-style or modern geometric designs created by Caltrans.

Zukowski said her impression from talking to Pang is that the outlook is positive that Caltrans will eventually reimburse the city for the sound wall. But either way, she said she believes the city is committed to the project.

“It’s something that we really look at as Caltrans’ responsibility,” Zukowski said. “However, it is also our responsibility. This is a health hazard.”