Awaited Hwy. 198 Project
By
Miles Shuper
Tulare County - Everyone involved in last week's groundbreaking ceremony for the long-overdue conversion of 10 miles of Highway 198 between Highway 99 and Hanford agreed that the drive between the two points will be safer by spring 2012.
Construction cost is $50 million with the total project, including engineering, design, property acquisition and other associated costs, estimated at $91.4 million. The project contractor is Flatiron Construction Corp. Funding comes from the state and federal dollars including $44.5 million from Proposition 1B, the $19.9 billion transportation bond of 2008.
Highway 198 is a significant agricultural goods movement corridor and also serves commuters traveling between Visalia, Hanford and the Lemoore Naval Air Station. It also is a key route to the Central Coast and connects with Interstate 5, which, along with Highway 99, are major north-south roadways in the state.
The stretch between Tulare and Kings counties has long been a dangerous one, especially in the foggy season, and the site of numerous multi-vehicle pile-ups resulting in fatalities and major injuries.
Making the Tulare-Kings counties connecting corridor considerably safer and greatly increasing the traffic capacity was stressed repeatedly before and after the ceremonial turning of shovels symbolic of ground-breaking ceremonies. More than 50 people, most of them representing Caltrans, Tulare and Kings counties, as well as Hanford, Lemoore and Visalia, attended the symbolic shovel-turning event. Although some trenching and utility pole relocations have begun, major work was scheduled to start immediately, officials said.
It was obvious from comments made during the ceremony that the occasion marked an end to frustration by both state and local officials that the often-delayed project was finally becoming a reality. Funding delays and priority list downturns kept the project on hold.
Every person speaking at the 45-minute event cited high-risk factors associated with the often fog-shrouded corridor.
Gerry Pierce, public affairs officer for the Hanford office of the California Highway Patrol who has worked numerous major accidents along the 10-mile stretch over the years, put it most bluntly: “It's going to be safer. A lot of lives will be saved. The commute is going to be safer.”
Pierce described the groundbreaking as “a great day.”
Pierce sounded a somber note relating having to inform a father working at a well-known restaurant that his son had been killed in a Highway 198 crash. Pierce also referred to crashes resulting from impatient drivers going too fast or attempting to pass in dangerous situations on a highway impacted well beyond its capacity.
Assemblyman Danny Gilmore (30th District), a former longtime CHP commander who also worked many major crashes, called the funding “money well spent,” saying he has waited a long time to see the project start to become reality.
Brian Everson, acting director of Caltrans District 6, said the project will close the existing gap in the four-lane section from Hanford to Visalia, enhancing commuter mobility and movements of services and goods, especially those related to agriculture.
About seven miles of the project are
in Kings County and three in Tulare County.
Included in the project is a crossover at Road 68, just west of the Highway
99 interchange. There will be no offramps or onramps at the location,
just a north-south over crossing.
Visalia City Council Member Amy Shuklian, who grew up a short distance from the highway and attended Delta View School, recalled looking out of the school windows when wrecks occurred nearby. The elementary school, which now is closed, was the site of the groundbreaking and is being used by Flatiron
Construction as its project site headquarters. Shuklian recalled times when the fog was so thick the students could only hear the sounds of crashing vehicles.
Ironically, last week's event almost was delayed because a state agency, the Office of Mine Reclamation, threatened to nix an action by Kings County which cleared the way to move dirt from the project from two long-planned water recharge basins south of Highway 198.
Kings County Water District Manager Don Mills said the mine reclamation agency objected to moving the dirt from the basin sites because it was too cheap compared to mined earth from the marketplace. An exemption to state rules had been granted to expedite the highway project as well as to cut costs for both projects, according to Mills.
Gilmore reportedly intervened and the water district's legal counsel convinced the state agency to back off, according to Mills.
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