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A former contract manager for California's transportation agency pleaded guilty Monday in what federal prosecutors said is an ongoing investigation into a bid rigging and bribery scam involving millions of dollars worth of contracts. Choon Foo "Keith" Yong agreed to cooperate with the investigation into what prosecutors said was a conspiracy to rig the competitive bidding process for improvement and repair contracts at California Department of Transportation facilitie

Picture it: A car-free trip to Santa Cruz, for an attractive fare, on a train that took you to the beach in the morning, back home that night, and showed you some great scenery along the way. That describes the Sun Tan Special, operated by the Southern Pacific railroad between San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Cruz on summer weekends and holidays for most of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. It was more than just a conveyance. “[It’s] a happy train, filled with people in a vacation mood,” says a 1940s Southern Pacific flyer. “It gives you six hours on...

On December 4, California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) Build North Coast Corridor (NCC) crews performed the final concrete pour to complete the underground foundation for the new Interstate 5 (I-5) bridge at the San Elijo Lagoon in the City of Encinitas. The bridge reconstruction will help relieve traffic congestion, improve lagoon tidal flows, and create new bike and pedestrian paths when complete in late 2021. “Throughout the course of this regionally significant transportation project, the efforts to reestablish the health of the San Elijo Lagoon is an achievement with regional environmental benefits,” said...

Officials from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) knocked down giant white letters spelling “TRUMP” on the hillside of someone’s private property on Tuesday, citing it as a “life and safety issue.” “This was a life and safety issue because there were concerns about distracted driving,” Chief Public Information Officer for Caltrans Lauren Wonder said.

In the latest step toward the rebirth of San Francisco’s Presidio from an aging former Army base to a bright light of America’s national park system, crews are set to break ground Thursday on a project to build a new 14-acre public park on top of two freeway tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge. When finished in 2021, the unusual project, called Tunnel Tops, will link Crissy Field, on San Francisco’s waterfront, to the Presidio’s Main Post, parade grounds and visitor’s center. That connection was severed more than 80 years ago when the road to and from the Golden Gate...

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated when the California Transportation Commission voted, despite a host of warnings, to pay a contractor more than $1 billion to build two tunnels and a stretch of road outside San Francisco nine years ago. Schwarzenegger said the project’s new approach, which aimed to cap public expenses and shift responsibility to the private sector, would serve as a “shining example” of an innovative way to improve the state’s highways while saving taxpayer dollars. Now the project, known as the Presidio Parkway, is more than two years late and $208 million over budget. When the commission approved...

Marin transportation officials were cautiously optimistic Monday after a recent court ruling upheld a major funding source for several local highway projects, but the funding could be in limbo because of appeals. “We have tremendous congestion and these projects are congestion relievers,” said Dianne Steinhauser, executive director of the Transportation Authority of Marin. “We hear from the public constantly about how bad the congestion is right now. We’re hoping that this money starts flowing. It’d be great to see it by the end of 2019.” Regional Measure 3, the June 2018 ballot measure that increases tolls for seven Bay Area...

Imagine driving along a four-lane elevated causeway above the brackish San Pablo Bay, shaving more than an hour off the normal Highway 37 commute. Transportation planners have for years envisioned remaking the 20-mile route from Novato to Vallejo into the North Bay’s most important east-west corridor. Now, they are ready to act. Officials in Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties have been meeting for several years, pondering solutions to Highway 37’s notorious bottlenecks, where 45,000 cars per day stretch the normal 20-minute commute to as much as 100 minutes. They have also acknowledged that traffic improvements will be irrelevant without...

Yes on Prop 6 Campaign Files Ethics Complaint with Three Law Enforcement Agencies Traffic was delayed 18-24 minutes and motorists were furious with the clear violation of state law in using taxpayer monies to campaign. Photos, video, and witness testimony of the incident was released at a press conference along with a Criminal Complaint alleging violation of numerous state and local laws. The campaign flier passed out clearly contains prohibited “express advocacy” language such as “Vote NO on Prop 6” and the Caltrans work crew member is caught on video admitting he was “working with Caltrans” and “They just told...

OAKLAND, Calif. (KTVU) - Caltrans got notice and formal grievance from its highway maintenance workers that they are sick, tired and disgusted with homeless camp clean up. Caltrans finds itself between a rock and a hard place; between the homeless and its employees. Cleaning up homeless camps is often dangerous for the crews tasked with doing the work. Often the ground is a muddy, slippery, debris ridden stew of things that are exceedingly sharp or dangerous to touch, such as potentially toxic or biologically unsafe materials. "Feces and urine and feminine products and all kinds of things on the ground;...

As an innovator and early adopter of freeways, California became the symbolic capital of car culture. But the ease of movement conferred by the massive postwar freeway building boom was short-lived, turning the dream of car travel into a nightmare of congestion and long commutes. The story of how Californians went from getting around to getting stuck behind the wheel is deeply entwined with the history of the urban freeway, an enterprise that advanced earlier and on a larger scale here than anywhere else in the country. Half a century ago, there was reason for optimism about cars. Los Angeles...

Add one more investment to the list of CalPERS’ controversial investments: a privately run state highway. The retirement fund recently purchased 10 percent of Indiana Toll Road Concession Co. The firm runs a 157-mile stretch of highway that runs across northern Indiana from Illinois to Ohio. California’s state engineers’ union says it’s a horrible investment that sinks government employees’ money into a project that, ironically, is hostile to government employees. The toll-road company is the first of what fund managers anticipate will be more investments in infrastructure and transportation projects as the $291 billion system broadens its reach into those...

--SNIP-- Three months ago, Brown’s Department of Transportation, fulfilling a 2009 legislative mandate, began circulating a draft of a California Transportation Plan, aimed at setting policy for the next quarter-century. Citing California’s commitments to reducing greenhouse gases and improving access to non-automotive transportation, the CTP proposes to reduce automotive travel by increasing motorists’ taxes, flatly rejecting “road capacity enhancing strategies,” and urging the state to “avoid funding projects that add road capacity.” Implicitly, therefore, it contends that increasing traffic congestion and the cost of driving would compel Californians to abandon their cars in favor of transit, bicycles and other non-automotive...

A South San Jose neighborhood has had enough with a growing homeless camp that has been behind their homes for years. The state is now stepping in to kick the encampment out. For the five year he has lived in the Pinehurst neighborhood, Harlow Blub said he has dealt with some rowdy neighbors. “Totally frustrating, it’s been an endless struggle, it seems like,” Blum told KPIX 5. These neighbors don’t live next door. They live in a homeless encampment behind his backyard wall. “A lot of noise, they have pets back there, dogs are barking, sometimes they argue,” Blum said,...

... Carpool lanes are so clogged in California, the state could lose federal funding and approval for projects if it doesn’t fix the problem. Under federal law, carpool lane drivers in California must be able to go an average of 45 miles per hour or faster during peak hours. Additionally, over a six-month period, traffic has to go that fast 90 percent of the time. Caltrans explains that means the lane’s average speed can drop below 45 no more than two days a month ...

While broken bolts on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge are commanding everyone's attention, Caltrans has another problem on its hands - 96 seismic shock absorbers on the western span, some of which began leaking lubricant just three years after they were installed. The estimated cost of the fix - $13 million. And, like the brittle bolts on the eastern span, there are questions as to whether Caltrans ordered the right shocks - or dampers, as they are known - in the first place. The dampers are located between the bridge towers just below the roadway, and are...

OAKLAND — Strategically positioned high above the water, in a narrow crawl space between the new Bay Bridge deck and the top of its big pier east of the tower, instruments are listening for the sounds of cracking inside steel anchor rods. Caltrans placed 10 acoustic emission sensors on select rods in early April after some of the massive bolts -- 3 inches in diameter and 17 to 24 feet long -- snapped and triggered widespread worry about the replacement eastern span's seismic safety. The instrument records the energy produced when a crack initiates, spreads or moves within the rod,...

At least 30 of the giant bolts that hold together the new, $6.4 billion eastern span of the Bay Bridge have snapped. As a result, Caltrans is considering replacing all 288 of the bolts on the new bridge before it opens, The Chronicle has learned. Caltrans insists the new span is safe and that plans to open it the day after Labor Day are still on track. However, officials say it's too early to determine how long it will take to fix the problem - or the cost. Toll Bridge Program Manager Tony Anziano said engineers are "pretty confident" the...

Joe Thomas administered CPR and saved a baby boy's life on the side of the roadA Caltrans maintenance worker who helped save a toddler’s life along State Route 54 earlier this week was reunited with the happy, healthy baby boy and his very grateful family on Friday. On Monday, Caltrans worker Joe Thomas was traveling along SR-54 when he noticed two women in distress on the side of the road, crying and waving for help. The women, mother Denise Ortiz and grandmother Rebecca Hill, told Thomas their 13-month-old baby, Cesar Ortiz, wasn’t breathing and needed immediate medical attention. Thomas called...

The employee fired twice by Caltrans (and reinstated the first time) didn't appeal a third disciplinary action taken against him for numerous serious workplace infractions, including "inexcusable neglect of duty." The cause of Duane Wiles' uncontested discipline in July 2000 will probably never be known. . . . Wiles has appealed his November firing. As the story continues to unfold, we wanted to ask State Worker blog users: