With a price tag estimated at more than $300 million for
construction alone and no funding secured, the planned widening of
Highway 25 between Hollister and Gilroy is still years away. But
that’s not stopping local transportation planners from laying the
groundwork for a four-lane expressway that one day will replace the
well-traveled, two-lane road.
With a price tag estimated at more than $300 million for construction alone and no funding secured, the planned widening of Highway 25 between Hollister and Gilroy is still years away. But that’s not stopping local transportation planners from laying the groundwork for a four-lane expressway that one day will replace the well-traveled, two-lane road.
“The economic situation has got everybody down, but you can’t build a building unless you have a blueprint,” said Lisa Rheinheimer, executive director of the San Benito County Council of Governments. “You can’t build a highway unless you clear the environmental review phase. It’s going to be an incremental process.”
One step in that process is the environmental impact report, which examines the potential effects that an expanded roadway would have on the agricultural land through which it would run. Caltrans is the lead agency for the review, for which the public comment deadline ended last week.
Various options exist for Highway 25, including leaving it as-is – the so-called “no-build” option – or routing it to the east or west of the current roadway, which then would become a frontage road for local residents and agricultural vehicles. Simply widening the existing roadway to four lanes along its entire existing route is not being considered because of the amount of utilities, businesses and residences that would be affected by the expansion.
“We have asked Caltrans to look at options for phasing in that entire roadway,” Rheinheimer said. “It was clear to me at the time that coming up with the magnitude of $300 million for the entire stretch was going to be difficult. We asked Caltrans to break it down into segments that we could phase in over time – something smaller that is more attainable for San Benito County.”
The environmental report acknowledges the need to expand the two-lane highway due to slow-moving farm equipment and trucks sharing the existing road with commuters. Adopting a new route alignment now, even if the money is not yet there to build it, would allow San Benito and Santa Clara counties to incorporate it into their general plans, before more development occurs along that stretch of highway.
Caltrans is considering two routes for the 11.2-mile stretch of roadway, both of which share an alignment from a half-mile south of Shore Road to U.S. 101 in Santa Clara County. From Shore Road south toward Hollister, the two proposed routes differ, with one east of the existing highway and one mostly to the west. Both alignments would be wide enough for the four-lane expressway, which would be 342 feet across, including a median.
The EIR also offers two “build alternatives,” both of which propose creating a 3.8-mile, four-lane expressway that would run from Hollister north before transitioning back to the existing two-lane highway just west of Hudner Lane. Alternative A would run to the east and cost nearly $98 million to construct. Alternative B, running to the west, would cost approximately $61 million.
COG’s technical advisory committee recommended that the board support the route and build alternatives that would have the expressway run to the west of the existing Highway 25 route. Alternative B would cost $36.2 million less to build than Alternative A and would affect fewer businesses and residential properties.
