With the din of Interstate 80 traffic for background music, the head of Caltrans joined local and federal officials Tuesday in Roseville to showcase improvements along one of the state's busiest arterials.
A television camera panned freeway construction near Douglas Boulevard as Will Kempton, director of the state Department of Transportation, stepped up to talk about his "tour celebrating an investment of $1 billion in the I-80 corridor."
Kempton and his entourage began their I-80 road trip at 7:30 a.m. in the Bay Area, with their final news conference scheduled for 3 p.m. at the Boreal Ski Resort. In Roseville, he was joined by local officials, including Celia McAdam, head of the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency and Keith Nesbitt, vice chairman of the agency.
Though Interstate 80 is "an economic pipeline," Kempton said that four year ago, it was in an embarrassing state of disrepair. He joked that as he drove back from Nevada over a bad stretch one winter, he had wished he could pack the snow over his vehicle's Caltrans logos.
But with Proposition IB transportation infrastructure bonds approved by voters in 2006, along with local and federal funds, improvements were planned for the freeway, which is one of only three continuous coast-to-coast highways in the nation.
Caltrans is working on the second of its three-phase I-80 project for South Placer, but other proposed improvement projects for the freeway run from Colfax to the Truckee River Canyon.
In South Placer, the first phase, tackling "the bottleneck" at the county line, was completed in 2007, providing eastbound motorists with an auxiliary lane from Riverside Avenue to Douglas Boulevard.
The $31.2 million second phase, which started in May, is projected to be completed in the fall of 2010. The construction, done by Teichert, will add an east and westbound bus-carpool lane and auxiliary lanes from the county line to just west of Miners Ravine and Eureka Road.
Speaking about ongoing construction, Kempton said, "The biggest problem is that we're doing this project under traffic conditions, so there will be disruptions." In some ways, repairs to I-5 in Sacramento were easier because of the road closures, he said in an interview.
