Hollister
– After a decades-long planning process, local leaders broke
ground Tuesday on the Highway 25 bypass.
Hollister – After a decades-long planning process, local leaders broke ground Tuesday on the Highway 25 bypass.
San Juan Bautista City Councilman George Dias, who chairs the county Council of Governments’ board of directors, said there has been talk about building a bypass to route highway traffic off Hollister’s San Benito Street since the 1950s. He said serious efforts to make the bypass a reality began after local voters approved the Measure A sales tax in 1988.
“The credit goes to previous COG boards, previous staff, previous councils and all the people who pushed for Measure A,” Dias said.
Many of the event’s speakers referred to the project’s long gestation; some even joked about it.
“I had (staff members) bring me up to speed, because I was a mere infant when this started,” Supervisor Don Marcus said.
Despite Tuesday’s celebratory tone, construction hasn’t started. So instead of digging up dirt along the bypass route – normally a symbolic gesture anyway – representatives from the county Board of Supervisors, Hollister City Council and San Juan Bautista City Council stuck their golden shovels into soil that had been hauled to the intersection of Airline Highway and Sunnyslope Road and piled onto a blue tarp.
Rob Snyder of Pavex Construction, the Graniterock subsidiary that was low bidder for the project, said actual construction will probably begin sometime between mid-May and early June.
“On a project of this size, you need a lot of people and a lot of organization,” he said.
Snyder, who will be the project manager for Pavex, is still talking to COG about what the first piece of construction will be, but he said it’s likely to entail relocating existing utilities and sound walls.
COG Executive Director Lisa Rheinheimer said the bypass, which will reroute highway traffic from San Benito Street to a new road east of McCray Street, will be a six-lane road from Sunnyslope Road to East Park Street, and four-lane road from East Park Street to San Felipe Road.
The $45 million project will be funded by a mix of federal, state and local dollars, Rheinheimer said. The breakdown includes $2.2 million from the federal government, $7 million from the state, $26 million from city and county funds and $10 million raised by the Measure A sales tax.
Marcus said that when completed, the bypass will ease congestion for city and county commuters, as well as making downtown Hollister more pedestrian-friendly.
“I’m looking forward to seeing the design coming to fruition,” he said.
Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or [email protected].
