101 Bridge Expansion Delayed

Citing environmental considerations and inclement weather, Caltrans officials said Monday that replacement of the Ventura Freeway’s Santa Clara River bridge is expected to be delayed until 2007.

Work on the massive $112-million bridge and road-widening project, which includes a redesign of the Ventura Freeway and Oxnard Boulevard interchange, was to be completed in 2006. Officials also said the interchange portion of the project could be finished ahead of schedule.

News of the delay comes at a time when other county highway projects have been pushed back because of the state’s financial crisis, including the Lewis Road widening project that will help ease traffic around Cal State Channel Islands and the widening of California 23 through Thousand Oaks. But the bridge project has stalled for other reasons.

“It’s a combination of the weather, the environmental considerations and other delays,” said Dragan Buha, Caltrans senior resident engineer on the project.

With five environmental permits required, the process of widening a two-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway from Vineyard Avenue to Johnson Drive that began in spring 2002 was soon hobbled by delays.

Buha said the bridge contractor couldn’t work in the Santa Clara River bed from May through late September the first year because of concerns about disturbing nesting wildlife, including the southwestern willow flycatcher and the least Bell’s vireo, a federally endangered songbird. The bridge, where traffic is expected to increase to more than 214,000 daily vehicle trips by 2020, is to expand from seven to 12 lanes.

Other environmental considerations, including mandatory monitoring of steelhead trout migration, led to an additional five-month delay through last April. “People think Caltrans can’t do things more quickly, but we have to follow the law. The environmental regulation greatly slows down our construction timetable,” Buha said. “Based on previous experience, we can only anticipate more environmental challenges.”

At least three weeks of construction have been lost to poor weather, and Buha said wet weather will always be a factor with a multiyear construction timetable. He said the bridge-widening could be completed as early as mid-2007 but warned “that may change.”

Caltrans officials last year won approval to alter their original five-stage construction schedule. The latest plans cut that to four stages and allow certain segments to be finished earlier than anticipated, according to Scott Sylvan, a Caltrans resident engineer.

“What this will allow us to do is complete the Oxnard Boulevard interchange by late 2004 or early 2005, weather permitting, which is about two years ahead of schedule,” Sylvan said. “We’ve been using management tools to make up time where we can.”

Motorists on the 101 will soon see work crews erect scaffolding above the freeway near Town Center Drive, which is where the concrete roadway of the overpass will be poured.

The north- and southbound entrances at the freeway interchange are closed, but when the revamped interchange is completed, drivers will be able to travel in either direction from both sides of the boulevard.

That section of freeway, now passed by more than 160,000 vehicles daily, has already received relief.

When the northbound freeway entrance was shut, an additional lane was added on that side of the 101 to ease the frequent bottlenecks. “We do what we can, but it’s impossible to get back that entire year” in delays, Sylvan said.

According to the engineers, the first section of the new Santa Clara River bridge will be completed by July and ready for northbound traffic. About the same time, southbound vehicles will be shifted over to what are now the bridge’s northbound lanes.