Alameda County Transportation Improvement AuthorityNEWS RELEASE* Route 84 compromise in Fremont and Union City OK’d *OAKLAND, Calif. (May 26) - The long-debated plan to build a replacement for State Route 84 across Fremont and Union City, linking I-880 to Mission Boulevard (State Route 238), finally moved forward Thursday when the governing board of the Alameda County Transportation Authority officially began a public process to amend its expenditure plan. Approval and construction of the compromise project would clear the final roadblock to the completion of the entire $1.1 billion transportation improvement program that was promised to Alameda County voters when they approved the countywide half cent sales tax for transportation improvements in the 1986 general election. All the rest of the projects that were part of that plan have been completed or are now underway. A new 20-year expenditure plan was approved by voters in 2000. A compromise plan for a scaled-down version of the original Route 84 replacement proposal won approval in April from city councils in the two cities. Several previous versions of the plans had been opposed by the Fremont Council. The ACTA board formally adopted the same memorandum of understanding that Fremont, Union City and Caltrans approved, which the ACTA board had approved in concept before it was forwarded to those jurisdictions. The amendment of the 1986 Expenditure Plan will set the stage for more detailed design and environmental studies to begin. Approximately $88 million in Measure B funds is allocated to the project. The original plan, which called for the construction of a new parkway cutting across undeveloped ground that was purchased and reserved for the project years ago, all the way from I-880 to Mission, cleared environmental review in August 2002, but the final document was held up by community concerns. The new plan, which calls for a smaller, four-lane version of the new roadway to be built only between Mission and Paseo Padre Parkway, and upgrades to existing portions of the route along Paseo Padre and Decoto Road in Fremont, will require new environmental reviews, explained Art Dao, ACTA’s deputy director. The compromise will also require the amendment of the ACTA expenditure plan, which was approved by voters countywide in 1986. Such an amendment must now win approval from a majority of the 14 cities in Alameda County, including enough jurisdictions to represent a majority of the population of the county, the county Board of Supervisors and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. (An amendment to the same expenditure plan to install a set of compromise projects in the Route 238 Corridor in Hayward garnered unanimous approval in a similar countywide process last year.) Because it is a smaller project, the new facility would not meet state standards for a state highway. Caltrans has agreed to bring the local streets between I-880 and Mission now designated as Route 84 up to up to a state of good repair and then to release the state highway designation, allowing the City of Fremont more control of the streets involved. Because some pieces of land owned either by the state or by ACTA between I-880 and Paseo Padre Parkway would not be needed for the compromise development, they could be sold. The agreement provides that the proceeds from the sale of land that ACTA owns will be used for the new project. The proceeds from the sale of state-owned property would be allocated for use on the Measure B project now underway to rebuild the I-880 / Mission Boulevard interchange in southern Fremont, if approved by the California Transportation Commission. These additional funds should fill a current funding gap for the interchange project. The agreement also spells out how funds allocated to the project will be reallocated if the project doesn’t move forward for any reason. It provides that the portion of the project through Union City, between Mission and Alvarado-Niles Road, could still be funded even if the Fremont portion of the project were not done. Union City would also receive funds to help mitigate the impacts of not completing the full project. While the detailed designs still must be finalized, the new portion of the compromise facility between Mission and Paseo Padre Parkway would be generally limited to a four-lane divided street, with a significant landscaping plan to buffer it from homes on either side. Fremont residents whose homes border the vacant land where the street would be built have been among the most vigorous opponents of the plan over the years. New lanes and other improvements would be added to Paseo Padre Parkway and Decoto Road, where traffic would be routed along the existing streets. ACTA staff anticipates that consideration by all the city councils and the county supervisors should be completed by the end of this year, when the ACTA board could consider the amendment’s final adoption. At that point, final design and environmental review processes could take place. ACTA estimates that once a final design is approved, construction could take from two to three years, with completion around mid-2013. # # # For more information about ACTA and ACTIA, please visit www.ACTIA2022.com ACTIA and ACTA logos and photos of a number of other previous ACTA projects, all scanned specifically for print publication, can be easily downloaded, either from the news page of the ACTIA Web site, or from http://www.GiveMeMore.com/ACTIA. *For Immediate Release: *May 25, 2006 *Contacts: |