February 2005

The February meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area section was held on February 17, 2005 at the Caltrans District 4 Headquarters in Downtown Oakland with over 100 attendees. The meeting’s feature speaker was Will Kempton, the director of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Director Kempton presented his vision for future of Caltrans: strengthening partnerships and expediting project delivery. Director Kempton was introduced by Bijan Sartipi, the Caltrans District 4 director.

Director Kempton was appointed by governor Schwarzenegger and Sunne Wright McPeak, secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing in November 2004 to oversee Caltrans which is responsible for maintaining 50,000 lane miles of state highways with 22,000 employees, an operating budget of $9 billion, and over $7 billion of projects currently under construction. Since the majority of Caltrans projects impact and benefit various different groups, Director Kempton emphasized the importance of strengthening partnerships with other statewide and local government agencies, consultants, and citizens groups to deliver projects that meet all stakeholders’ goals. Starting this summer, Caltrans will implement the Performance Improvement Initiative to develop a performance based management to reduced the amount of bureaucracy and improve customer service.

Director Kempton also discussed the “Go California” initiative which will be unveiled by the governor in the next few months. This is a creative and innovative solution to solve the state’s transportation problems over the next 10 years. The aim of the initiative is to reduce traffic congestion through organized and systemwide efforts such as context sensitive design, transportation demand management, intelligent transportation systems, transit, non-motorized modes, toll lanes and other tools.

Director Kempton also discussed the issues associated with the seismic upgrade of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. The current design of the project is very complex which presents very unique construction challenges. As a result, estimating the cost of the project is very difficult. Combined with the sharp increase in the cost of material and construction over the last few years, the cost for construction of the proposed replacement bridge has been increasing. Director Kempton believes that the best course of action is to modify the bridge to a simpler design which would have a lower cost and can be constructed over a shorter time period.

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