Though it lacks funding, plan in place to widen the
well-traveled route
The planned widening of Highway 25 between San Felipe Road in
Hollister and Highway 101 in Santa Clara County is years away, but
the county now has a better idea of where that expansion will take
place and how much it might cost.
The Council of Governments last month endorsed plans for both
the expansion of the entire nearly 15-mile stretch and a 3.8-mile
four-lane expressway that would run from Hollister northward on the
west side of the current Hwy. 25 before transitioning back to the
existing two-lane highway.
Though it lacks funding, plan in place to widen the well-traveled route
The planned widening of Highway 25 between San Felipe Road in Hollister and Highway 101 in Santa Clara County is years away, but the county now has a better idea of where that expansion will take place and how much it might cost.
The Council of Governments last month endorsed plans for both the expansion of the entire nearly 15-mile stretch and a 3.8-mile four-lane expressway that would run from Hollister northward on the west side of the current Hwy. 25 before transitioning back to the existing two-lane highway.
After COG asked Caltrans in June 2010 to work to reduce potential impacts the project would have on agriculture, residents and businesses, the state transportation agency modified the roadway plan to cut estimated costs by millions.
By reducing the median width from 62 feet to 46 feet and moving the proposed alignment closer to the existing Route 25, the need for farmland to be acquired for right-of-way was reduced by up to 30 percent, slashing the estimated cost of Phase 1 of the project from $66.2 million to $49.9 million.
Estimates on the entire build-out of the Highway 25 expansion project have been pegged at $300 million, for which there is no funding identified.
“I don’t know there’s much we can do right now for funding,” said Lisa Rheinheimer, executive director of COG. “The state is broke, the federal government hasn’t done anything with the reauthorization of funding, so that kind of puts us in a holding pattern.”
Still, creating a plan for the eventual expansion of the well-traveled roadway means less work will be required when – or if – funding becomes available.
“You have to first do your environmental document and preliminary plans,” Rheinheimer said. “We have one piece done and when money becomes available we can move forward.”
When it became clear in 2007 that securing funding for the entire project at once was unlikely, COG asked Caltrans to consider breaking the project into phases from San Felipe to Hudner Road and from there north to Highway 101.
This past June, while commenting on an environmental report for the project, the COG board asked Caltrans to seek ways to lessen the amount of ag land needed for the project while still addressing the need to ease the commute for vehicles.
The modified plans, presented in December, eliminated the need for full right-of-way acquisitions of homes and businesses as well as reducing the design footprint to cut costs.
Richard Rosales, a Caltrans project manager, said in a letter to COG that the idea of creating a conventional, four-lane highway from Hollister to Santa Clara County was eliminated as a design alternative in 2003 “because it did not meet the purpose and need for the project.”
The conventional alternative, he said, would not reduce direct access to the highway from numerous private driveways along Highway 25, meaning that slow-moving farm vehicles would continue to share the roadway with commuters.
“Even with two lanes in each direction,” he wrote, “traffic flow would continue to be affected during commute hours with so many driveway openings (currently 31 between San Felipe Road and Hudner Lane.) An expressway, on the other hand, would consolidate vehicle access to the highway, reducing the number of locations where through traffic would have to slow down or stop due to vehicles turning onto or off of the expressway.”
The four-lane option was also rejected because widening the existing highway would have had more of an environmental impact than the proposed alternatives now being considered.
The conventional alternative, Rosales said, would have affected 13 more businesses, 11 more houses and cost $3.9 million for additional utility relocation compared to the current plan.
Caltrans has pledged to work with COG and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to coordinate widening efforts for both U.S. 101 and Highway 25 and it will also help the council seek funding from the State Transportation Improvement Program.
Rheinheimer said there is not enough economic activity in San Benito County or elsewhere in the state to generate money for the Highway 25 widening project in the near future.
After the state finalizes the environmental review of the project, “it’ll likely sit on the shelf for several years,” she said. “You have to start somewhere.”
