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February 9, 2003

Picture a new way to San Jose

The state's highway wish list may include Pombo's Altamont Pass alternative.

WASHINGTON -- Picture this: an alternative to the ghastly Altamont Pass commute. Start at the Stanislaus and San Joaquin county lines, where Highway 580 meets Interstate 5. Head west, over rugged mountains, until 23 miles later you've arrived at Highway 130 entering San Jose.

Right now, it's horse and mountain bike country, at best. But a San Joaquin Valley congressman who has recently come into significantly more power thinks this just could be a future highway route easing commuters' lives. He wants the feasibility studied, with federal money.

"This would give people in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties another way to get to San Jose and the Silicon Valley without having to go the additional mileage," said Doug Heye, a spokesman for Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy.

Put another way, it's a chance to outflank the Altamont Pass, over which an estimated 124,000 vehicles pass and sometimes crawl daily.

Pombo was recently promoted to chairman of the House Resources Committee, which makes his a Capitol Hill voice to be reckoned with. Of at least equal importance, he's also a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Before the year is out, this panel will stuff thousands of individual projects into its latest transportation bill.

Pure political pork, critics such as Taxpayers for Common Sense call it. Undeniably, the transportation bill costs a ton of money. The last one, in 1998, cost $218 billion. The sheer volume of asphalt poured can also incite controversy.

"We think it would be a great waste of money, and also bad for the environment," Greenbelt Alliance communications director Dan Fahey said of Pombo's road proposal.

Fahey also cautioned that new roads typically "induce development" that, in turn, further spurs traffic. The net result, he said, is more traffic and not less.

But with this legislative train only coming around every six years or so, local planners are scrambling to get their own projects on board. San Joaquin Valley officials have just a few more weeks to compile their wish lists, for submission to Congress by the end of the month.

They are wish lists made more pressing by the evaporation of anticipated state funds, lost as a result of California's fiscal crisis.

Fresno County, for instance, wants federal help with widening Highway 99 to six lanes between Selma and Kingsburg, and help with extending Route 180 east of Fresno. Fresno is also looking at extending Route 180 west from the tiny town of Mendota to the fast lanes of Interstate 5.

Manteca wants $300,000 for fixing up the McKinley and Yosemite avenues interchange. Stanislaus County wants money for the perennially troublesome Route 132, and for the interchange at Pelandale Road and Highway 99.

For the record, the House transportation panel insists such projects be "of significant importance to the improvement of our nation's surface transportation infrastructure." Definitions of "significant" differ, though some projects clearly enjoy a higher profile at least by association.

Merced County, for instance, wants help with buying buses and constructing a campus parkway for the new University of California, Merced, campus. The parkway alone is expected to cost at least $23 million, while the proposed buses and fueling station would run $5 million.

"Without these (federal) funds, neither project will be completed," said Jesse Brown, executive director of the Merced County Association of Governments.

Such associations, often called councils of government, coordinate regional transportation planning. They are now in the early stages of competing for funds, to be provided when Congress rewrites what's currently called the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century.

This legislation authorizes spending on a vast array of highway, mass transit and related projects. Some of the money is required to be spent, while other projects will still need annual appropriations once authorized.

California's share of the last transportation bill completed in 1998 amounted to roughly $20 billion. That helped fund the planned UC Merced parkway, the extension of Highway 41 in Madera County and improvements at the intersection of Highways 99 and 120 near Manteca, among other projects. At the time, Altamont Pass alternatives were not in play. By late last year, though, Pombo first introduced a bill to study the feasibility of hooking up Interstate 5 and Highway 130. He'll soon reintroduce the proposal. It probably has the greatest chance of success if Pombo can attach it to the big transportation package.

California officials have long recognized that the existing routes seem only to get worse. One San Joaquin Valley route into southern Santa Clara County, on Highway 152 over Pacheco Pass, is notoriously dangerous. The California Department of Transportation reported there were 324 accidents and 16 fatalities on that road over the past five years.

The other route, on Interstate 205 over the Altamont Pass, is notoriously congested.

"The reality is that I-205 cannot handle the traffic volumes that are anticipated, now or in the future," said Diane Grindall, senior regional planner for the San Joaquin County Council of Governments. A feasibility study, if Congress authorizes it, would examine Pombo's notion that a new route serve cars only; no trucks allowed.

The Bee's Michael Doyle can be reached at (202) 383-0006 or mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com. Portions of this story also appeared in the Fresno Bee, Stockton Record, Contra Costa Times, Tri-Valley Herald, and The Daily Review (Hayward).

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