The Carpinteria phase of the Highway 101 widening project will get underway in late September or early October, local transportation officials said at Thursday’s meeting of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments.
The $115 million third phase of the project will reconstruct and widen the Linden Avenue overcrossing to three lanes and the Casitas Pass Road bridge to four, along with a landscaped median along the center of the latter.
Phase 3 will also widen the highway over Carpinteria Creek and will add Class 1 bikeways along the creek, in addition to smaller circulation improvements.
Phases 1 and 2, which kicked off the project in 2008 and have been completed, widened the freeway between Milpas Street and Hot Springs Road in Montecito as well as between Carpinteria and La Conchita in Ventura County.
In all, about 16 miles of Highway 101 will be widened.
Last month, Caltrans awarded a construction contract to Security Paving Inc., the company behind Phase 1, to carry out Phase 3, after the California Transportation Commission allocated $60 million for the work.
A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for September, potentially at Carpinteria Middle School, and construction is expected to last four years.
Project spokeswoman Kirsten Ayars told SBCAG that as part of the construction contract agreement, two lanes of the highway must be open at all times with the exception of certain nighttime activities, no two consecutive entrance or exit ramps can be closed concurrently, and access to residential and business areas and for bicycling and pedestrians must be maintained.
The phase’s outreach program will include mailings, a website, a telephone hotline and public meetings, Ayars said.
The final phase of the project, estimated to cost $425 million, will widen the 10 miles of freeway between Santa Barbara and Carpinteria by adding high-occupancy vehicle lanes.
Last December, Superior Court Judge Thomas Anderle ordered Caltrans to revise and recirculate portions of Phase 4’s environmental impact report following a lawsuit challenging the adequacies of the report’s analysis of cumulative traffic impacts and impacts to local intersections.
Caltrans is currently preparing that new traffic impacts section for the environmental impact report, SBCAG public affairs and public information manager Gregg Hart told Noozhawk.
In August, he said, the section will be released for public comment before finalization, which is expected before the end of the year.
The entire project is estimated to cost $737 million, a figure county officials are hoping to bring down modestly in the coming years.
Hart told Noozhawk that time is an important issue for the overall project, and plays a key role in the final cost; the quicker it takes to complete, he said, the less expensive it will ultimately be.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.