SAN MIGUEL MTN PKWY Koch buys into San Diego CA-125S pike venture

SAN MIGUEL MTN PKWY

Koch buys into San Diego CA-125S pike venture

Whether it has been ITS America, IBTTA, IRF, ARTBA-PPP, this year even a conference on congestion pricing, there has been a solid contingent of attendees from Koch Industries, among them Bob Zauner formerly with Hughes TMS, the tolling and ITS division. The blacktop company based in Wichita Kansas is obviously scouting for investments outside its established area of specialty manufacturing of asphalt components. Koch’s first move has been to buy a 29% interest in Calif Transp Ventures (CTV), previously a joint venture of Parsons Brinckerhoff and Transroute Int. CTV is in the final stages of getting alignments straightened out and permits to start work on the CA-125-South toll road (CA-125S) east of San Diego now named by the developer the San Miguel Mountain Parkway.

Koch will contribute technology and materials as well as the capital to the $400m venture, financing, designing and constructing the tollway pavement. It will use new asphalt technologies and provide CTV with a 15 year performance warranty, under which it guarantees to maintain the pavement.

The highway is a major north-south motorway from Spring Valley east of San Diego at SR-54 south 18km to the new border crossing of Otay Mesa. The highway provides a third north-south route the others being I-5 and I-805, both of which converge near the overcrowded San Ysidro-Tijuana crossing. The 125-S alignment is about 15km inland from the Pacific coast and about 8km east of the nearest competetive mwy, I-805. It is due to have 7 intermediate interchanges initially with several more possible later.

Currently the north-south I-5 by the Pacific carries 140k -170k veh/day and I-805 nearer the proposed toll road 80k -160k veh/day. Forecasts published by Caltrans suggest in the absense of 125S these will grow to 210k veh/d (I-5) and 180kveh/day (I-805) by 2015. They project that with 125S as a freeway I-5 would be cut 10k veh/d and I-805 by about 30k veh/d and that traffic on 125S would run in the range 100k to 170k veh/day. (In all cases traffic grows as you go north up the roads as local traffic is added to border traffic.) As a tollway the projections show 125S doing little for I-5 at the coast and taking about 10 to 20k veh/d off I-805, and itself running at 70k to 120k veh/day . The projections assume that an east-west mwy I-905 running parallel with the border about a mile north, allows Otay Mesa traffic to move efficiently over to I-5 and I-805 and put I-905 traffic in 2015 at over 100k veh/day.

1991 franchise: CTV signed a franchise agreement with Caltrans for the project in 1991 and target dates for different stages of the project have repeatedly been missed. Endangered species, wetlands, archeological sites and property owner opposition has slowed the project but so far not stopped it. The area is partly built up, with many acre-plus sized mini-ranches with horses and small vineyards, the kind of people who know how to fight a road if they don’t want it. But the San Diego Assoc of Governments and business community strongly support the new road as vital to taking some of the growth pressures off the western corridors. CA-125 is being built initially as a simple 2x2 lanes but is to have a 30m median reservation for widening to 2x4 and 2x5 lanes plus space for transit. Near its southern end a 45m 900m long bridge will be needed over the Otay River. The alignment does an S twist at the northern end to minimize impact on property owners and involves a 400m long 40m high bridge over the Sweetwater River and major cut and fill because of the hilly terrain. To gain public acceptance there will be extensive land shaping to depress the road below ground level and extensive crib-walling.

The roadway has long been planned as part of an outer network of highways in developing hilly areas on the eatern fringe of the San Diego metro area (population 2.8m). Its success will depend heavily on the state or others building connecting mwys to the north, on the pace of metro area development and the growth of trade with Mexico. The developer wants to start construction in 1998 for an opening in 2000.

CTV began with Fluor Daniel and Prudential Bache as partners but they dropped out several years ago leaving Parsons B and Transroute as the stayers. (Contact Jay Rossner Koch Ind 316 828 7462, Kent Olson CTV 619 338 8385)