The County of Monterey's State Route 1 Climbing Lane Project consists, in general, of constructing a second northbound lane (climbing lane) on State Route 1, from Rio Road to Carmel Valley Road; including but not limited to pavement widening, roadway embankment construction, traffic signal improvements, traffic staging, and curb, gutter, and sidewalk improvements. After opening bids on the project, the apparent low bidder came in $1.2 million higher than the engineer's estimate for the project at $6.5 million. As such, the County of Monterey is seeking additional sources of funding to make up this shortfall.
After discussions with the County of Monterey and other consultants, and reviewing the bid summaries, Transportation Agency staff was informed of several reasons for why the bids may have come in higher than the engineer's estimate:
- The timing of the project bid coming at the end of a busy year when many contractors may already have jobs in the pipeline could have resulted in higher costs; and
- Inflation of some construction cost items on the the project, such as the traffic signal, being significantly higher (at times double) than in the recent past.
To partially close the funding gap, the County of Monterey is requesting to program Regional Surface Transportation Program Fair Share funds in the amount of $2,085,693. The State Route 1 Climbing Lane project is an eligible project to use these funds. In addition to this amount, Transportation Agency staff is recommending to use the balance of unprogrammed 2017 Regional Surface Transportation Program Competitive funds in the amount of $328,261. This project was already awarded $600,000 in 2017 Competitive funds, so this proposed action would increase that amount to $928,261. With the proposed programming actions in this staff report, the current funding for the project would be as follows:
$ 3,000,000 - State Transportation Improvement Program (Secured)
$ 2,085,693 - Regional Surface Transportation Program Fair Share (Proposed)
$ 275,000 - State Highway Operations & Protection Program Minor A (Secured)
$ 600,000 - Regional Surface Transportation Program Competitive (Secured)
$ 328,261 - Regional Surface Transportation Program Competitive (Proposed)
$ 6,288,954
This proposed programming action would close the funding gap on the project to $211,046. Transportation Agency staff is coordinating with the County of Monterey and Caltrans to identify additional sources of funding to cover this amount. A portion of the cost increase is related to the traffic signal work included in the project at the request of Caltrans. The County and Caltrans are executing a cooperative agreement to fund and complete this signal work as part of the State Route 1 Climbing Lane project with State Highway Operations & Protection Program Minor A funds. It's possible that this fund source could be increased to cover the remaining costs.
The risk in not fully funding the project and the County successfully awarding the contract is that the $3.0 million in State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) funds could be lost. The STIP program guidelines state that funds that are allocated without a contract being awarded will be rescinded with the funds returned to the State pool rather than the county share. The County has already received its allocation of these funds from the California Transportation Commission and will need to award the contract to maintain the funds. If the funds were to be rescinded and the project does not move forward, the Regional Surface Transportation Program competitive funds could then be programmed to other projects by the Board of Directors.