The San Mateo County 101 Express Lanes Project faces potential delays in toll system implementation for its northern segment but is meeting financial expectations, San Mateo County Transportation Authority staff said at a May 5 meeting.
While south segment tolling is now operational, TA project manager Leo Scott said there is a potential delay in getting tolling started at the northern segment from Redwood City to South San Francisco by the end of 2022. Some fiber optic cable infrastructure was damaged during construction and must be repaired and retested before being used. An underground fiber optic cable runs from Palo Alto to South San Francisco and is critical to the project. Tolling equipment up and down the corridor reads the tags and sends messages through the fiber connection. The TA is exploring hiring additional crews to splice together the fiber optic cable system to save time. However, the TA staff doesn’t know if this is possible yet. Scott hopes to have more information about the timeline by the end of May.
“I’m not yet prepared to give you a new date for delivery because we are still working pretty aggressively to find a way to turn on tolling in 2022. It’s at risk,” Scott said.
The project creates 22 miles of express lanes in San Mateo County on Highway 101 to connect to express lanes in Santa Clara County. The southern segment runs from the San Mateo County and Santa Clara County line to Whipple Avenue in Redwood City and is complete. Caltrans is adding one lane in both directions on Highway 101 from Whipple Avenue to Highway 380 in South San Francisco, the northern segment, with the far left lanes converted to express lanes. Construction on the northern half from Whipple Avenue to Interstate 380 began in February 2020 and will finish in late 2022. Paving is completed from Broadway in Burlingame to South San Francisco, with paving ongoing in the rest of the northern segment. Construction crews have placed around 54% of the final layer of asphalt. All drainage work is complete, and all overhead signs have been installed, except sign bridges.
The TA says the project will reduce congestion, encourage carpool use, use modern technology to manage traffic, and upgrade pavement and lane striping. The project cost $581 million and is being financed primarily through $306 million in state revenue. The TA provided around $30 million in local Measure A revenue and $86 million in loan funding from future toll revenue. According to TA staff, around $18 million in North contract contingency funds have been used, with about $3.3 million left. The risk exposure for the project is also down to $10.3 million from around $20 million in April of 2021. Risk exposure calculates potential losses from a project or activity.
“We are trending down within budget, and that’s our intended goal. I hope to be able to report those numbers are closing even more when I am back in one quarter,” Scott said.
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(2) comments
Isn't it lovely. First we pay for these "improvements" with our taxes and then we get to pay again through tolls to use them. Have we gone nuts?
What a joke.
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