ORANGE CO CAL Foothill South costs rocket

ORANGE CO CAL

Foothill South costs rocket

The Transp Corridors Agency’s (TCA) webpage still says that the cost of the Foothill South will be $385m (‘90$s) yet they have announced they have just signed a design-build contract for $644m and that doesn’t cover land costs. And in Calif land ain’t cheap. We wondered what the heck’s goin on.

The Foothill South is in rolling but not mountainous country and it is only a 26km (16mi) 4-lane, 5-interchange job. Seems basic. Much the same team is just finishing a 46km (29mi) Eastern/Foothill North toll road for TCA for $743m and that is in far more rugged terrain, has 15 interchanges and some of it is 6-lanes. Twice as large a job at a glance.

$6m/lane-km ($10m/lane-mi) for a rural motorway!

On Fredericton-Moncton NB a private concessionaire is building for about $0.6/lane-km 193km (118mi) of 4-lane pike for less than the TCA contract — seven times the length of the Foothill South. And around Oklahoma City and Tulsa the Okie pike (see p10) is spending $600m for 77km (48mi) of 4-lane mwy with 26 ICs in three separate pikes — three times as much at a bit less $s. Jerry Pfeffer of Keewit built 91-Express right in the middle of 240k veh/day, also for a third the Foothill South lane-km price, namely $2m lane-km (130/64).

Wot’s with Orange Co govt, we wondered, that they seem to be getting so little road for so much money?

We recalled that Orange county agencies had some complete clown in charge of their reserve funds a year or so back who managed to put half of them into bankruptcy. He lost a billion or so playing with futures. He wasn’t even stealing it — it was boneheaded stupidity writ humongously large. And noone blew the whistle on the fool until the damage was done. With Orange county government’s capacity for monumental incompetence so recently demonstrated, a reporter has to approach a $40m/mi rural mwy with skepticism especially when there’s the 644/385 inflation laid out in the official webpage.

Gene Foster the project engineer at TCA tells us he hopes it won’t work out as bad as the $644m contract number. The only absolutely firm part of the contract price, he says, is an initial $16m for detailed evaluation and design. The high full contract dollar figure is unit-prices-bid times tentative-volume-estimates based on only 5% design. And that 5% design uses virtually a worst case scenario for unstable soil conditions and assumes very conservative slopes for cuts and fills, and therefore huge earthmoving quantities. In the process of the first phase detailed evaluation and design they may find major economies, he says. And if the agency is dissatisfied with the way the design and price is shaping up, it has the right under the contract to rebid the substantial subsequent parts of the job — what will otherwise be up to $628m worth.

So competitors, don’t give up! This Foothill South remains worth following. There hasn’t been any traffic and revenue study yet and so financing remains to be achieved.

There are some genuine large costs here in environmental works. The Foothill South’s interchange with I-5 involves two ramp structures almost a mile (1.5km) long each, in part because they can’t put fill in creeks and wetlands along the side of I-5. And there is major provision for wetlands, endangered species and wildlife mitigations all along the route because the various federal agencies and enviro groups are giving the TCA a hard time. The TCA and local cities’ preferred alignment in wild foothills country has state permits already, but because it goes just into the edge of the US Marines Camp Pendleton training area it needs federal permits as well (There is no federal money.)

The design that went for bid provides for ten major wildlife “undercrossings” but unlike a cheap 3m box culvert that would suffice for mere humans, the wildlife get 35m long (120’) dual bridges. Such wide flat areas under the highway are needed in order to prevent the predators, koyotes and the odd mountain lion, from using the undercrossings as ambush spots against the deer and jack rabbits. That would be unsporting, it seems. The area is not a designated wildlife reserve but these days federal agencies ganging up with enviro groups can make any wild area into a wildlife reserve and load the attendant costs of building in the wild onto anyone with deep pockets like TCA.

Making the Foothill South a kind of highway-inside-a-wildlifepark is apparently a major source of the sky high cost. So on this reading it is the federal regulators and the greens who have their fingers in TCA’s cookie jar. No fools they. (Contact: Gene Foster TCA 714 436 9800)