We’re coming up on the end of 2018 — just one more month left. November saw a significant election result for California’s highways — the defeat of Proposition 6. As a result, SB1 will continue to funnel funds to improve highways, transportation, and transit throughout the state. November also saw me finish the second traditional update of the year. Most of these headlines are in that update; headlines being held for the first traditional update in 2019 will be indicated with ¤. With that, here are your headlines for November:
- Important Events in Caltrans History. A timeline of Caltrans.
- Overwhelming support of South Shore Community Revitalization Project at TRPA meeting. A standing room only crowd was in the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) board room on October 25, 2018 for an updated presentation, and plans for the next steps, of the U.S. 50 South Shore Community Revitalization Project, commonly known as the Loop Road. It reroutes Highway 50 from its current location in front of Heavenly Village and the casinos to behind Raley’s, the Village Center and Harrahs Tahoe.
- After warning Modesto about risks, Caltrans goes down another road. Modesto’s auditor advised city officials in a July memo not to use Meyers Nave — the law firm Modesto hired in 2014 to serve as its city attorney — for the legal work on a roughly $100 million project to realign and upgrade a stretch of Highway 132. Monica Houston wrote that doing so could expose the city to the risk of fraud, waste and abuse. But it turns out Caltrans was not so steadfast, and it appears it may have been a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing at the transportation agency. Houston’s memo is one of the reasons that her work is under scrutiny..
- Rural groups: Rethink proposal. Members of the Association of Rural Town Councils hope the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will delay the public hearing for the proposed Centennial master-planned community to allow time for a more complete traffic study. The L.A. County Regional Planning Commission voted Aug. 29 to recommend the project for approval to the board of supervisors. The board is expected to consider the project in December, although a date has not yet been set. Proposed on about 12,300 acres along Highway 138 west of 300th Street West, Centennial calls for 19,333 homes on the 150-year-old Tejon Ranch at the far reaches of the northwestern Antelope Valley.
