Friday, January 29, 2010

East County Construction

What the heck is going on out there in Santee??  I hear that all the time from friends that live in the east county.  On highway 67 it  looks like their building 10 bridges to nowhere.  The bridges are in fact the end of the 52 that will stretch from the 5 all the way east.  Caltrans timeline has it completed by the end of this year (2010)..we'll see.  The project from the 125 to the 67 is called "Sunny Side Gateway", homage no doubt to our fabulous east county weather...don't think I'll be using that on the air.    What do you get for $255 million?  Two lanes each way...hmm....remember the last 52 project over the Mission Trails Summit?  It opened with 2 lanes over the hill and was a mess from day one.  Let's hope 4 lanes are enough. By the way, the extention of the 905 in Otay Mesa between the 805 and Otay Border will be 6 lanes... Caltrans claims time savings of 10 minutes on the commute...on this point I think their actually underselling it....even with 4 lanes, if you've spent any time on Mission Gorge Rd lately you know what I mean, time savings will be huge.
Want to read more here's a link to the PDF...
http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist11/facts/SR-52brochure.pdf

The other east county headache these days has been the 8 east of the 67....the left lane is being extended from 2nd to Greenfield, but only eastbound.  Project completion by late 2012.  No word on westbound help for your morning commute between Lake Jennings and E. Main.

It's on the drawing board at least....more lanes on 125 at Mt. Helix between 94 and 8...that will help the daily bottleneck but to me the most exciting part of this proposal....(yes exciting..sad isn't it)...the ramp from South 125 to East 94.  Too bad it's only proposed.  Here's the bottom line from Caltrans......

The total estimated cost of the project ranges from $226
million to $336 million. There is $60 million programmed for
the project as part of the State Transportation Congestion
Relief Program (TCRP). Due to the state’s budget situation,
most of these funds are not available.

Oh well, we've got the Sunny Side Gateway going for us.   See you on the radio.....cal.

1 comment:

  1. We were driving to swim the other day. And as we passed by the highway construction @ 67 and Bradley or Prospect, Claire pointed out something very interesting. There, way high up on a metal crossbeam, someone had drawn a stick figure!

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