College Avenue error will cost $1.2 million to fix

A design error that delayed the widening of College Avenue under Highway 101 will cost taxpayers an additional $1.2 million to fix, and some Sonoma County officials say Caltrans should make up the difference.

In addition, Caltrans has revised its explanation for the error that caused the roadway to be as much as 2 feet below the intended grade in places.

Initially, the department blamed the error on a conversion from metric to English measurement units between the time the project was designed and when construction began last summer.

Now, however, Caltrans officials say the error was caused by engineers assuming that original survey measurements were accurate despite the widening project being shifted north by 20 feet in intervening years, according to Caltrans spokesman Allyn Amsk.

The shifting explanations and funding debate have annoyed Santa Rosa and Sonoma County officials to no end.

City Councilwoman Erin Carlstrom, the city’s representative on the Sonoma County Transportation Authority, said she’s been “harassing and haranguing” SCTA staff to get a better explanation from Caltrans about the “debacle.”

SCTA board members received that update earlier this month, and Carlstrom said some were “none too pleased” at Caltrans’ position that the county would have to pay for the error out of its allotment of funds from the state Transportation Improvement Program. This would leave less state funding available for future local road projects.

“It was Caltrans’ project, relying on Caltrans data, and an error committed by Caltrans based on a decision of Caltrans to shift the project,” Carlstrom said. “Being asked to fund that additional $1.2 million out of our state transportation funding obviously leaves a bad taste in all of our mouths.”

The project is the last piece of the $100 million Highway 101 widening effort between Highway 12 and Steele Lane, most of which was completed between 2006 and 2008.

The College Avenue piece, which aims to increase the travel and turn lanes on Cleveland Avenue and Morgan Street as well as construct sidewalks and bicycle lanes, was postponed for years because of funding shortfalls.

The time lag contributed to the current problems, said Suzanne Smith, executive director of SCTA.

“It took way too long to get this work done and as a result, the stops and starts over a decade have resulted in oversights and errors that, had we been able to fund the work originally, I’m sure we could have avoided,” Smith said.

Between the time the project was originally designed, more than a decade ago, and when construction began in 2014, the ARCO gas station on College Avenue underwent a major renovation. By the time Caltrans went to acquire the needed right-of-way for the project, new structures had been installed within the proposed right-of-way, Smith explained. This would have forced Caltrans to acquire the entire property by eminent domain, not just a strip near the road, she said.

That could have cost an additional $4 million, according to an SCTA estimate.

“Acquiring this property would have significantly added to the overall cost of the project,” Amsk said.

Before the error, the cost of the project was estimated at $6.7 million.

Caltrans was the lead agency on the work, but Santa Rosa kicked in $330,000 to get it built when funds were short. After the project was shifted north, the “design team assumed that the existing survey data would be adequate,” Amsk said. The decision to shift the alignment “was made jointly by the team,” according to the SCTA report.

State transportation funding guidelines provide that “overruns are to be funded from the same source of funds” used for the project, which in this case is entirely state Transportation Improvement Program funds, Amsk said.

The project was halted in early August after a business owner pointed out to Caltrans officials that the sidewalk being installed in front of his muffler shop was as much as 2 feet below where it needed to be. At that elevation, motorists would have only been able to reach businesses on the north side of College Avenue by ridiculously steep driveways.

Caltrans scrambled to find a fix and did, but the delay only allowed them to complete most of the work on the westbound lanes last year. The eastbound lanes are expected to be completed by July.

Carlstrom said SCTA officials will need to address the funding shortfall in May, as well as whether to send a “strongly worded letter” to the state making the case for why the county should not be penalized for the state’s error.

SCTA officials are not recommending that approach. A staff report on the issue suggests the SCTA board supportS the funds to complete the project being taken out of Sonoma County’s future allotment of state transportation dollars.

If the board opposes it, the burden would likely fall on local jurisdictions to come up with the money to complete the project, according to the SCTA. Because the project would need to be “repackaged” and rebid, that could push completion off by another two years, driving the costs up to at least $2.5 million, according to the report.

SCTA staff proposes the former option “to get the work completed in the most timely and cost-effective manner.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.