Anderson council ponders regional transportation plan to widen I-5

The 50-minute drive from Corning to Shasta Lake could, in the next decade, take an hour and a half if nothing is done soon to increase the capacity of Interstate 5, Anderson's City Council was told during a special workshop prior to its March 3 meeting.

"We know that gridlock is coming," said consultant Jeff Kay of Willdan Financial Services, a firm hired to do a technical analysis of traffic flows and patterns on the I-5 corridor and its overcrossings.

"New development through 2030 is projected to cause severe congestion on I-5 from the southern (Shasta) County line through the Mountain Gate overcrossing. Although the majority of this segment currently meets local level-of-service standards, almost the entire segment is projected to fail by 2030," Kay continued.

Although the freeway is a federally-funded highway, roughly 65 percent of the trips on I-5 in Shasta County reflect local rather than external or inter-regional travel, Kay said his firm's analysis found.

Using traffic counters - those black hoses that extend across roadways from time to time - as well as personnel hired to physically count vehicles at times, the Willdan Financial Services study found that the number of local vehicles on I-5 north of South Bonneyview jumps from slightly less than 500 per hour to well over 4,000 per hour between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., remains above 3,300 per hour throughout the day and climbs back to almost 4,500 per hour between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., then falls off dramatically to 2,000 per hour until 10:30 p.m.

Meanwhile, truck traffic on the same section of highway stays pretty even - between 100 to 500 trucks per hour - throughout the day.

Widening the freeway to six lanes from Cottonwood to Mountain Gate is expected to cost just under $232 million - money that in today's economy just isn't in the cards from either state or federal sources, noted Daniel S. Little, executive director of Shasta County's Regional Transportation Planning Agency.

Working together with county officials and city managers in Anderson, Redding and Shasta Lake, Little said the quickest way to raise the money is to pool the Regional Transportation Improvement Program (RTIP) funding from gasoline sales tax received each year by the county, add a $1,697 traffic impact fee on each new house built in the county and use all of that money as a local match for federal and state highway improvement grants.

"We want to leverage as much state and federal money as possible," Little said. "I-5 is going to experience some congestion as it is the backbone of our transportation system. I-5 is central to our economy and with mobility comes commerce," he noted.

Nine San Francisco Bay Area counties - Sonoma, Marin, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Alameda and Santa Clara - are involved in similar partnerships while 10 other largely urbanized counties in central and southern California have long been doing the same, he said.

Anderson's share of the costs would be $33.4 million with the city kicking in nearly $6.9 million of its share in (RTIP) funding, adding $1.25 million in property tax increments and a $21.85 million levy of impact fees on new construction, Little said.

The remaining $3.4 million would be contributed by Shasta County from its share of the RTIP funds, he added.

"For every $1 in fees collected in Anderson, $1.50 will be spent on" improvements to the Riverside and Ox Yoke overcrossing and freeway interchanges and another $2 will be spent on widening I-5, Little assured council members.

To mitigate for the current economic recession, no property tax increases or impact fees would be collected for at least two years, and then only one year after the county's population increases by an average of 1 percent annually, Little said.

Additionally, the fees would be phased in over four years, with only 25 percent of the fees assessed in the first year of implementation, 50 percent in year two, 75 percent in year three and 100 percent in year four.

Although the workshop was for information only with no action anticipated, several Anderson City Council members chimed in with their support.

"It is time to move on this now," said Keith Webster. "If we don't get on this now, I wouldn't want to live here in 2030. Let's get every state and federal dollar we can get," he continued.

Newly-elected councilman James Yarbrough concurred with the city's former mayor.

"I don't think we need to wait until we have a problem to do something about it," Yarbrough said of the predicted gridlock."

Vice Mayor Norma Comnick, sounding the only negative tone, noted that the "biggest problem is the state and federal governments keep robbing from our transportation funds."

To that comment, Little responded, "The gas taxes are something we all pay, and if we don't go after that funding, someone else will."

Mary Machado, executive director of Shasta Voices, a citizens' group that has in the past opposed the regional "Fix 5" concept of tapping local sources to increase the freeway's capacity, attended the workshop session but remained seated when Anderson Mayor Butch Schaefer invited comments from the public.

However, Shasta Voices' February 2009 newsletter states, "Of course, we have not changed our position at all on Fix 5 fees by this or any name. The regional approach once proposed serves no purpose and leveraging isn't necessary after all. Even if they have found a way to make additional fees legally feasible, we cannot support the continual addition of fees for every project on the drawing board or on some government wish list."