Like an old car that doesn’t run right, Caltrans needs to be
stripped down and rebuilt from scratch, according to Santa Clara
Valley Transportation Authority Chairman Don Gage.
Like an old car that doesn’t run right, Caltrans needs to be stripped down and rebuilt from scratch, according to Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority Chairman Don Gage.
Any highway project that relies on the state transportation department is “guaranteed” to be delayed two to four years, said Gage, who is also a Santa Clara County supervisor and a former Gilroy mayor.
“It’s been a big joke within the industry for years,” Gage said Thursday, “(but) that, to me, is unacceptable. … A two- to four-year delay on any project means millions and millions of dollars.”
Gage said he doesn’t know if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has any plans to revamp Caltrans, but he has a few suggestions.
“I think he really needs to get in there and disassemble and reassemble it until it runs like a business,” Gage said.
Gage noted that this strong opinion is his own, rather than the considered judgment of the VTA or the county Board of Supervisors. His reaction comes from a predicted $2.3 billion cost increase for Bay Bridge reconstruction.
The latest Caltrans estimate shows a price hike from $2.6 billion to roughly $5 billion to rebuild the Bay Bridge’s eastern end – still weak from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake – into an architectural masterpiece to rival the Golden Gate. So far, Sacramento is not funding the cost overruns, however; Schwarzenegger and several Legislative leaders have said Bay Area local governments must come up with the money by raising bridge tolls.
“You still may have to raise the fees because there isn’t any money, but you’ve got to fix the problem,” Gage said.
That problem is the way Caltrans is managed and the law requiring local governments to go through Caltrans for any state-funded project on a state highway, Gage said.
Local governments can avoid Caltrans only if they come up with alternate funding for projects. According to Gage, it was in large part to avoid an inevitable Caltrans delay that the VTA uses voter-approved half-cent sales tax to fund major Silicon Valley highway improvements, such as last year’s ahead-of-schedule, under-budget widening of U.S. 101 between San Jose and Morgan Hill.
“We’re a self-help county,” Gage said.
By comparison, he said, Caltrans’ plan to widen state Highway 25 between Hollister and Gilroy is years behind.
“Why can we go to the private sector and get a project done under budget and ahead of schedule?” Gage asked. “For (Caltrans) to make excuses on how that can’t be, when you have example after example of when it does work – that’s a non-excuse.”
Gage said Caltrans’ incompetence shows itself in smaller projects as well, such as a plan to repave U.S. Highway 101 from Morgan Hill through Gilroy to the San Benito County line. Although crack sealing on exit ramps reportedly began Wednesday night, local VTA and California Highway Patrol officials were unaware of the project until the Gilroy Dispatch questioned them about it Tuesday afternoon.
Caltrans administrators in Sacramento did not immediately return phone calls for this story, nor did the governor’s office. Caltrans’ Bay Area spokeswoman, Brigetta Smith, declined to respond to Gage’s criticisms.
Gage said he has not yet seen a bureaucracy-reduction study that Schwarzenegger ordered in January, which recommends an administrative overhaul of Caltrans as part of a radical reorganization of state government in general. It would lump Caltrans into a new Infrastructure Department, along with the Department of Water Resources and 23 other agencies.
The governor has not yet commented on the report, which is being circulating to gather public comment. He will probably respond in the next few months, spokesman Vince Sollitto said Thursday.
Sollitto avoided comment on Caltrans in particular but said, “There are many things about the entire government bureaucracy that the governor would like to see improved. That’s why he called for this study.”
The VTA is not without its own black eyes, mostly related to cost overruns and revenue overestimates on transit services such as light rail and a plan to extend Bay Area Rapid Transit to the San Jose airport from its current terminus in Fremont. The VTA is operating on an approximate budget deficit of $100 million this year.
Peter Crowley can be reached at 847-7109 or [email protected].
