Dive Brief:
- The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) have started construction on the first $700 million phase of a $6 billion, 40-year overhaul of San Diego's North Coast Corridor, according to the Times of San Diego.
- Officials said the mammoth undertaking will begin by improving traffic, the environment and public access in three cities north of San Diego. This initial work will also establish the building blocks for the rest of the project, which includes carpool lanes, bridges and rail tracks.
- The upgrade program will utilize various local, state and federal money sources but will also be helped along financially by the half-cent, countywide TransNet sales tax, which was set up to help fund regional transportation projects.
Dive Insight:
Officials said the project has been in the planning stages for 10 years, which should help Caltrans and SANDAG avoid the overruns and delays that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority experienced during construction of an Interstate 405 carpool lane. The agency announced Tuesday that it had settled a $518 million lawsuit with Kiewit Corp for almost $300 million for what the contractor said were design changes and extra costs related to relocating underground utilities along the project's route.
San Diego also has another major project underway — the $2.1 billion, 11-mile Mid-Coast Trolley upgrade. The rail expansion, which will connect more cities to downtown San Diego and the University of California campus there, is the biggest project of its kind for the city. Officials were also able to score a prized Federal Transit Administration grant for more than $1 billion for the undertaking.
Infrastructure investment was a major talking point this election cycle, as federal, state and local governments have struggled to fund new projects and repair existing ones. As a result, public sector construction spending has been consistently declining. On a positive note, voters in 22 states across the U.S. approved a total of $201 billion in transportation project funding on Election Day.
