Free Republic

An anti-immigration group says it will fight the state transportation department's decision to relocate their Adopt-A-Highway site away from a busy Border Patrol checkpoint to a less-traveled stretch of roadway. Early Wednesday, the San Diego Minutemen's Web site said the group was soliciting donations for a legal fund so they can sue the state over Monday's order to move their highway cleanup site from a two-mile stretch of Interstate 5, California's major north-south highway, to an area on State Road 52. The group's leader, Jeff Schwilk, said that they were "dumbfounded" by the decision. "There is absolutely no reason to...

On Aug. 1, 2002, California's first Amber Alert was issued for two teenage girls abducted from Quartz Hill's "lovers' lane." The program hadn't yet been signed into law, but the alerts went out on California Highway Patrol signs and over the radio, and a Caltrans employee spotted the kidnapper in Kern County. "It was really incredible," said Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, R-Lancaster. "I don't even think Amber Alert was really up and running, but that was the first case. And it was so ironic - it was about a mile and a half from our house." Runner's husband, State Sen. George...

The land of the freeway is poised to become a little less free. Los Angeles County transit leaders on Thursday agreed to develop plans for toll roads within the next three years, after decades of opposition to the concept of motorists paying tolls to use the roads. The decision by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board comes amid criticism that Los Angeles has not joined other metropolitan areas around the nation in experimenting with "congestion pricing," in which motorists pay to use less crowded lanes. Last month, L.A. County lost out on a major federal grant because it did not have...

Speedy repairs on the melted MacArthur Maze freeway section that reopens Friday in Oakland have stoked interest in expanding the use of financial bonuses to motivate Caltrans contractors to finish projects earlier. The state Senate transportation and appropriations committees will conduct hearings next month on bonuses and other possible ways to reduce lengthy highway project construction times that frustrate the public, said Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch. Torlakson said legislators' interest was piqued by the MacArthur Maze contractor, which finished the project in half the expected time to earn a $5 million bonus. "This project is a sign of what can...

When California voters approved Proposition 1B last year, thus agreeing to spend billions building new roads, ramps and bridges around the state, they triggered the need to hire hundreds of professional engineers to design those projects. They also poured gas on an old debate around the Capitol: Should the state put all of those new engineers on the government payroll or use private consulting firms to perform much of the work? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signaled last week that he likes the private option. The governor hailed a state Supreme Court ruling that ended six years of litigation by the state's...

Caltrans Cloaks Millions in Deals Calif. Transportation Agency Labels Hundreds of Contracts `confidential' By MICHAEL R. BLOOD Associated Press Writer The Associated Press LOS ANGELES Mar 21, 2007 (AP) - The California Transportation Department shielded from public view details of at least 290 contracts worth more than $13 million, though there is no record the agency was given authority to strike the information from state records, an Associated Press investigation has found. The contracts labeled "confidential" and in many cases awarded without competitive bidding went out between 2002 and 2006 and ranged from $10,000 to more than $1 million....

Hundreds of homes that California's Department of Transportation bought up for freeway projects have fallen into disrepair over the last decade, it was reported Sunday. Caltrans currently owns more than 12,000 acres of land and is landlord to 1,300 homes and businesses where people still live and work, the Orange County Register reported, citing Caltrans and other state and court documents. About 40 percent of the homes Caltrans owned and rented out in the past decade had faulty plumbing, 20 percent had leaky roofs and 6 percent had rodent infestations, according to records cited by the Orange County Register. The...

Foreign engineers have been vital to the construction of California's complex and mammoth highway system, but they are being pushed out of jobs with the state Department of Transportation because of a conflict between state hiring rules and federal immigration laws. Dozens of foreign engineers in the past decade have left Caltrans because their temporary work visas were going to expire . . . Ninety-eight Caltrans employees -- 75 of them engineers -- are currently on H-1B work visas that last a maximum of six years. These engineers also will be forced to leave Caltrans unless the agency can sponsor...

Federal authorities could force Caltrans to kick hybrid vehicles out of congested carpool lanes or require drivers of non-hybrids to pick up an extra passenger to gain admission to overused lanes. And that could help unclog carpool lanes in the Bay Area, most of which have become commute-hour slogs, according to a Caltrans report compiled after more than 50,000 hybrids were given access to the lanes. The report found that carpool lanes on Interstates 80 and 880 and Highways 101, 4, 85 and 237 have gone from being relatively free-flowing routes in spring 2005 to stop-and-go congestion this past spring....

SAN FRANCISCO A bridge is being built around a rock slide that closed a main route to Yosemite National Park and disrupted business and life in the area, state transportation officials announced Thursday. The company chosen for the project, Teichert Construction, has started moving equipment and bridge parts to Highway 140, which has been blocked since April 29 by 3 million cubic yards of rock and debris. Construction can't begin until the California Department of Transportation gets all the permits needed to move through the Merced River and build on federal forest service land, but officials hope the project will...

SACRAMENTO -- A state agency won't use race anymore when awarding contracts. The California Department of Transportation made the decision because it could not show minorities suffered discrimination in contracting, Caltrans said. The department said it took the step early this week after a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set out that standard. Caltrans has had a goal of giving 10.5 percent of its federal contracting dollars to disadvantaged businesses. ...At stake is $5.1 billion for 1,400 transportation projects throughout California over the next five years. "Caltrans funds so many different projects around the state...

SACRAMENTO - Just when California is poised to ramp up road construction, Caltrans may roll back a civil rights program that has steered tens of thousands of federally funded contracts to woman- and minority-owned small businesses across the state. State Department of Transportation officials say they prefer to continue administering the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program -- which pushes contractors to give a percentage of their contracts to women and minority subcontractors -- but a federal court decision could kill the decades-old quota system. A ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May would force Caltrans to prove...

Despite a population boom forecast for California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hopes to keep traffic gridlock from worsening - and even improve it from today's levels - with his $107 billion transportation plan, officials said Friday. The governor's ambitious proposal for highways and freight-moving projects - which would be funded, in part, by voter-approved bonds - is unprecedented in a region where commuters spend 93 hours a year idling in traffic. It would add 750 highway miles, 550 miles of car-pool lanes and 600 miles of commuter rail. "We think we can make a significant improvement over today's levels for the...

OAKLAND -- A federal study now under way finds the cost of building the new Bay Bridge -- specifically the signature 525-foot suspension tower -- could explode again, this time by almost half a billion dollars. Almost ten years ago, Caltrans estimated it would cost $1.3 billion dollars to replace the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Five years ago, the state said it would in fact cost almost twice that much -- $2.5 billion -- for a new bridge. Last year, Caltrans had still another projected cost: almost $5.3 billion dollars. Wednesday night, Caltrans spokesman Jeff Weiss acknowledged the...

LOS ANGELES - The state Department of Transportation must pay $3.6 million to the family of a man who was killed at a freeway offramp in Carson, a state appeals court ruled. The 2nd District Court of Appeal on Wednesday reinstated the jury award in a wrongful death lawsuit, saying the Superior Court judge who threw out the verdict and granted Caltrans' motion for a new trial failed to specify his reasoning. Caltrans spokeswoman Lesa Saville said the department believed there were grounds for a retrial and is looking at its legal options. Jose Garcia was killed in November 2000...

Squeezed inside an enclosed box , a welder works in scorching conditions to join two steel legs that support the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. A supervisor working for the contractor checks the crucial first weld, followed by an independent inspector required to test the weld within 30 minutes. Another inspector hired by Caltrans reviews the initial inspector's paperwork to make sure everything is OK. The Caltrans-hired inspector also randomly checks about 10 percent of the welds. If substandard welds exist on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, the work would have slipped by a chain...

State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata went to bat for a West Hollywood billboard company being sued by Caltrans in 2001, and three months later received a $10,000 campaign donation from that company, documents show. The events are detailed in campaign finance records, as well as in documents Caltrans has provided under subpoena to a federal grand jury investigating possible public corruption on the part of Perata, D-Oakland, now California's most powerful elected Democrat. "There is no, nor will there ever be, any inappropriate connection between Senator Perata's legislative activity and any political contributions he happens to receive on...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the highest-level official to call for investigations of Bay Bridge construction as Caltrans ordered a halt to a welding operation that is part of an FBI fraud probe that widened Thursday. Caltrans Director Will Kempton ordered Bay Bridge construction team KFM Joint Venture to cancel a concrete pour over four of the remaining footings where workers allege shoddy welds are being done. Kempton also called for a reinspection of all the welds that would have been buried by the pour, even as the state agency and KFM insist that the nearly 5,000 welds were done properly...

The new Bay Bridge is riddled with defective welds, 15 welders told the Oakland Tribune in a nine-month investigation - allegations that could lead to criminal fraud charges. The welders' claims have prompted an FBI investigation. In the worst case, the federal probe could lead to tearing apart the bridge to see if it is structurally sound or needs to be rebuilt. The FBI began investigating allegations in February that welders were "encouraged or instructed to save time by producing substandard welds," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Mershon of the bureau's San Francisco division. The bureau is investigating...

The experimental lightweight concrete on the new Benicia Bridge is not drying properly, and Caltrans says it may need $130 million to correct the problem. It is only the latest in a series of snafus that have plagued the new Interstate 680 span and caused costs to shoot up from an official estimate of $385 million in 1999 to $1.06 billion before Caltrans' discovery this week. First, poor rock quality under the Carquinez Strait slowed and complicated the construction of foundations. Then, noise from the work unexpectedly killed endangered fish. Then, Caltrans design mistakes, including failing to prepare for construction...