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Tunnels' price tag skyrockets
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Devil's Slide circa 1915 when they were building the roadway.
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By Eric Rice--Half
Moon Bay Review
An updated cost
estimate for the Devil's Slide tunnels project puts the pricetag at almost
twice the estimate when the tunnel was first studied.
The California
Department of Transportation (CalTrans) now estimates the cost of the
Devil's Slide tunnels project at about $270 million - $230 million for
construction and $40 million for design and other non-construction costs.
What this will mean
for the project's chances of getting funding is uncertain. A clearer
picture may emerge in the next few weeks when CalTrans expects to receive
final approval for the final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the
tunnels.
Marc Roddin, who has
been tracking the tunnels project for the Metropolitan Transportation
Commission, was not especially alarmed by the jump in cost. He said federal
officials have been monitoring the project closely and if they approve the
EIS they will also, in effect, be signing off on the new cost estimate.
Both CalTrans staff
and Bill Wong project leader with the FHWA, which is responsible for approving
the EIS, predict that the EIS will be approved. Wong said it could happen
in as soon as two to three weeks, though previous predictions by CalTrans
and FHWA have fallen far short.
For almost five years
highway planners have been estimating the cost of the project at about $150
million. But Skip Sowko, project manager for CalTrans on the tunnels
project, said that inflation accounts for a substantial amount of the
increase.
The previous estimate
was based on the project beginning construction in 1997. The current
timetable now puts it in late 2003 or early 2004.
"A large portion
of it is simply escalation (of costs due to inflation)," Sowko said.
He said revisions
involving changes to cuts in the mountain, the entry portals, and avoiding
wetlands also drove up the cost. Also, the general bidding climate for
transportation projects is not as favorable today as it was in 1997, Sowko
said.
CalTrans and the
county propose drilling two 4,000-foot-long single-direction tunnels side
by side through San Pedro Mountain to replace a section of the existing
Highway 1 alignment, which has periodically suffered slippage and
landslides since it opened in 1937.
The new estimate has
not been released yet by CalTrans, but is included in a revised
environmental impact statement (EIS) prepared for the project. As part of
an extensive review of the environmental aspects of the document, the FHWA
required that CalTrans also update the cost estimate.
Even staunch tunnel
supporters were taken aback at the dramatic increase.
"Holy cow!"
reacted Zoe Kersteen-Tucker, an environmental leader in helping plan the
tunnels.
"This will
probably raise some eyebrows," Kersteen-Tucker said. "It's
raising mine."
But she reiterated
her support for the tunnels.
"What are our
choices? Dewatering is not permanent. That's throwing money away. No, I'm
not backing down. We need to build this."
In 1999 Congress
granted the tunnels project emergency funding as part of a huge
transportation funding bill called TEA-21. The funding is supposed to be
available when the project is ready to begin construction.
With TEA-21 funding,
the tunnels won't have to compete with other local projects for funding.
A figure as high as
$270 million is bound to make someone in the federal government sit up and
take notice, predicted Michael Murphy, an advocate of a different kind of
project called dewatering.
"How can anyone
honestly believe anybody is going to spend that much?" Murphy reacted.
"I just think that means it's deader than a doornail. At some level,
somebody is allocating scarce resources" to the tunnel instead of
other needed projects, Murphy said.
Although agog at the
size of the increase, Kersteen-Tucker and environmental activist Lennie
Roberts both emphasized that cost increases are routine in virtually all
transportation projects. Replacing a section of the Bay Bridge to make it
earthquake-safe, for example, doubled in price over the course of a few
years, but it is still proceeding forward.
But both were surprised
by the size of the increase in the cost of the tunnels.
"I suppose every
transportation project ever proposed has gone through a surprise like
this," Roberts said.
The increase is
certain to provide fodder for some of the tunnels project's critics. The
campaign slogan for the tunnel project - "Sooner. Safer.
Cheaper." - has regularly been revived by critics who say time has
already disproven the sooner part of it.
Roberts defended the
tunnels project by saying, "It probably still is cheaper than the bypass."
Sowko also stressed
that CalTrans is committed to the tunnels. He noted that the bypass would
include 11 structures and expensive, enormous cuts in the mountains. He
also said CalTrans still believes "Dewatering is not a permanent
solution."
"All the
elements we have in (the tunnels EIS) are needed, and the project has been
identified as needed," Sowko said.
Roberts predicted
that once the public gets over the "initial sticker shock in something
like this," the tunnel will continue its march toward construction.
"This project
has a huge head of steam and I know how hard it is to turn a project in a
different direction, having been in that position," said Roberts, who
fought CalTrans' efforts to build an inland bypass for 25 years before it
was forced by voters to abandon the bypass.
Criticism of the
tunnels has remained persistent, although it has been limited to a small
group of people.
Advocates of
dewatering, a technique of stabilizing the mountainside by removing water
inside it that weighs it down and causes slippage, want CalTrans to fix the
existing alignment of Highway 1. They maintain that dewatering could be
accomplished for a fraction of the cost of the tunnels. Murphy urged
CalTrans to spend $100,000 on a feasibility study of dewatering.
Murphy and others
point to dewatering projects in other states and at Devil's Slide by
CalTrans four years ago. That work is credited with helping Devil's Slide
weather one of the wettest winters on record without serious slippage as
indicative of its potential.
CalTrans studied
dewatering in-house as part of the EIS update and concluded it would not
work. Among the agency's concerns was the fractured nature of the rock in
the slide-prone area of the mountain, which makes it difficult to remove
large amounts of water, and erosion by the ocean undercutting the highway.
In 1996 when the
first detailed estimate to build a tunnel through San Pedro Mountain was
made the cost was put at between $131 million and $150 million. The
consultant that arrived at that figure, Woodward-Clyde, said at the time
that figure was "upper boundary" and could be expected to
decrease as much as 10 to 15 percent as designs were fleshed out and
estimates refined.
Roberts attributed
some of the cost increase to delays caused by Half Moon Bay resident Oscar
Braun. Braun has promised all along that he will sue to halt the tunnels.
He lost one court challenge already, but continues to threaten CalTrans,
the county and the Coastal Commission with additional lawsuits if the EIS
is certified.
His threats are
apparently being taken seriously. According to a member of CalTrans'
environmental staff, one of the reasons the Federal Highways Administration
has been unusually attentive to even the smallest details in the EIS is
because of the threat of a lawsuit by Braun.
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