Future freeway route through Bakersfield gets update
| Wednesday, May 11 2011 09:13 PM
Last Updated Thursday, May 12 2011 12:33 PM
Images
Centennial Corridor Alternative A
Centennial Corridor Alternative B
Centennial Corridor Alternative C
Concerned and interested citizens look at the proposed revised alignments for the Centennial Corridor presented at an open house meeting held in the county government building on Wednesday night in Bakersfield.
There's no way around it: There'll be a freeway cutting through someone's backyard eventually.
Dozens of concerned homeowners turned out Wednesday evening to pore over detailed maps showing revised alignments for the proposed Centennial Corridor, which will connect Highway 58 and the Westside Parkway in the heart of Bakersfield.
As it turned out, there were no broad-brush changes made to the remaining three options. Over the past year or so, engineers have fleshed out plans for onramps, tightened curves here and there and identified conflicts with existing roads.
But the basic path of the future six-lane freeway will still snake through developed areas mostly north of Stockdale Highway, wiping out existing homes and businesses.
"It's awful," said Janice Crooks, who lives on Kensington Avenue in the Westpark neighborhood, which would be split through by Alternative B. "We just did the whole house up this year."
Crooks has lived in her home for 27 years. "It's a beautiful neighborhood," she said. "So quiet, so nice."
The open house was thick with planners and engineers from the California Department of Transportation, better known as Caltrans, and from the city of Bakersfield and county of Kern. They answered questions as people pointed out their homes on huge maps posted around the rotunda of the county administrative building. Will my house be lost? people wondered. What about the park, the church, the senior center? When will we know which route is final?
A few years ago there were more than a dozen possible alignments. Those have been whittled down to three:
* Alternative A, estimated to cost $710 million, would impact 270 to 290 homes and another 70 to 90 commercial properties. It would run south of Stockdale Highway for about a mile, swinging north over California and Lennox avenues to connect with the parkway west of Mohawk Street.
* Alternative B, at $580 million, would affect 260 to 280 homes and 50 to 70 commercial sites. On paper, it's the closest thing to a straight line between the parkway and 58's dead end at the Wild West Shopping Center. In the real world, it bisects the close-knit Westpark neighborhood, and project planners have heard an earful from residents.
* Alternative C, estimated at $610 million, would displace 115 to 130 homes and 130 to 150 commercial parcels. It would run along the west side of Highway 99, veering west after California Avenue to hook up with the parkway.
A fourth option, Alternative D, was recently dropped due to a high price tag -- an estimated $1.1 billion -- and conflicts with the future high-speed rail system.
"The decision is not just made (based) on costs," Ahron Hakimi, a Caltrans project manger, told one group of Westpark residents, after noting Alternative B's impacts appeared greater than C's.
Wednesday's meeting wasn't a formal hearing, but an update to let residents know what's been going on and to get more public comments.
Planners hope to have a draft environmental report finished early next year. Caltrans could choose the route in late 2012. Then there'll be the final environmental report followed by final design work and property acquisition. Construction likely won't start until 2015 at the earliest, planners said, and more likely not until 2016 or 2017.
