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Westside Parkway hits funding roadblock
Project collapses after voters reject sales tax and state funds dry up
| Saturday, Mar 3 2007 8:35 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, Mar 3 2007 8:40 PM
Funding for the Westside Parkway, promised as our east-west answer to traffic congestion, has collapsed under construction cost escalations.
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Nineteen months ago it was estimated to cost $175 million to build the parkway. Now the bill is expected to come in at around $300 million.
Robert Phipps, an analyst with the Kern Council of Governments, said KernCOG has saved $180 million in state transportation dollars for the route.
State road-building money, usually handed out every two years, has dried up.
Voters rejected a transportation sales tax last year.
Thomas Road Improvement Program money -- a $630 million freeway funding gift to Bakersfield from the federal government, courtesy of former Rep. Bill Thomas -- can't be used to pay for the parkway.
Traffic impact fee money that will be raised over the next few years will likely be committed to matching the Thomas money.
Which leaves the Westside Parkway project high and dry.
Phipps' boss, KernCOG executive director Ron Brummett, said there is hope in the state road bonds passed by voters last November.
One of the streams of bond money could get Kern County around $99 million. There might be more money, Brummett said, but locals would have to compete for it with every other county in the state. Given this week's repudiation of Kern County by the California Transportation Commission, which rejected pleas for bond money to widen Rosedale Highway and Highway 99, Kern isn't a strong contender.
"We aren't being slighted anymore than we have been slighted over the last 25 years," Thomas said of the state's actions. "No one will help us if we aren't willing to help ourselves."
Bakersfield also could be forced to share some of the $99 million with other communities within Kern County.
Brummett said the Westside Parkway would get priority, but there are several other projects in Kern County that are ready to go and need money.
He said the city will have to hope the state starts giving counties regular freeway funding in 2008 -- for the first time in eight years.
Is there any guarantee that will happen?
"There is no guarantee you're going to live after lunch today," Brummett said.
If the money doesn't come, he said, the city of Bakersfield will have no choice but to build as much of the freeway as it has money for and finish the job later.
Heavy earthmoving equipment is scheduled to start work on the Westside Parkway in 2008 or 2009.
The freeway is designed to run from Heath Road at Stockdale Highway east to Mohawk Street on the north side of the Kern River, then across the river to meet up with Truxtun Avenue near Highway 99. It won't connect to Highway 99 or Interstate 5.
It is supposed to be complete by 2012 or 2013, said city of Bakersfield project manager Ted Wright.
In 2013, traffic models constructed by the Kern Council of Governments show that the Westside Parkway will carry 37,000 cars a day through west Bakersfield and dump most of them onto Truxtun Avenue at Oak Street.
To solve that new problem, the city of Bakersfield will have to build another freeway.
That freeway, the Centennial Corridor Loop, is already in the planning stages at the city and will be paid for partially out of the Thomas Road Improvement Program.
But the $450 million estimated cost of the Centennial Loop will soak up $330 million of the TRIP budget.
The Thomas money was also supposed to pay a part of the costs to widen Rosedale Highway to Highway 43, build two new north-south freeways in west Bakersfield and build an expressway along 7th Standard Road.
Bakersfield Public Works Director Raul Rojas said he's expecting costs for projects to skyrocket, similar to the parkway.
Which leaves Bakersfield looking for more cash to construct roads.