The Lincoln bypass highway construction project may be days from forced closure, Placer County officials said Monday.
Stunned by a state decision last week to halt project funding, South Placer Regional Transportation Authority board members are scheduled to meet in emergency session today to consider using local funds until the state budget crisis is solved.
Board Chairman Kirk Uhler and Celia McAdam, chief of the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency, said they oppose shifting local funds, given the state's budget uncertainties.
"That is a huge risk we are not willing to take at this point," county Supervisor Uhler said.
The Lincoln bypass, one of the biggest road projects in the region, would convert a 12-mile stretch of Highway 65 into a beltway skirting the town of Lincoln. Construction began in July and is expected to last several years.
The $324 million project was reliant on a state promise of transportation funds for half the project cost.
Last week, however, with the state budget billions of dollars out of balance, state finance officials took the extraordinary step of halting funds for thousands of public work projects statewide, including roads, levees, schools and prisons.
State Transportation Department officials have been scrambling to salvage money for some projects, spokesman Mark DeSio said. Absent success on that front, Caltrans will await Placer's decision today before deciding whether it must halt the project.
The Lincoln bypass is one of two Sacramento area road project immediately threatened by the state's funding halt.
A $41 million extension of Highway 50 carpool lanes through El Dorado Hills, set for groundbreaking last week, now sits in limbo as officials consider shifting local funds.
El Dorado County Supervisor Helen Baumann said Monday that county representatives will talk to the contractor about doing the work in phases.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, negotiating with the Legislature on a budget, said Monday he would like to have one approved in the coming days.
But state finance officials have said the state's cash flow problems are so severe that even a one-year budget solution may not be enough to allow them to unfreeze project funds.
Placer and El Dorado officials said they are upset by the apparent effect of the state's inability to come to a long-term budget solution.
"I am so profoundly disappointed in the way things have gone," Placer County's McAdam said. "We've worked 12 years on this. To have the rug pulled out from under this, it is beyond description bad."
McAdam said the South Placer transportation board will talk today about fronting local development fees to keep the project alive, but she will recommend against it. Those fees would last only about two months, she said.
If the project were to be halted, she estimated it would cost an extra $10 million to restart it later.
Call The Bee's Tony Bizjak, (916) 321-1059. Bee staff writer Cathy Locke contributed to this report.
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