You may have seen the signs on Elkhorn Blvd. recently announcing road closures and repairs being done. Here’s what we know.
According to Sacramento County Transportation, The number one lane both east and west bound on West Elkhorn Blvd will have alternating lane closures from 8:00AM until 3:30PM for construction of sidewalk ramps and asphalt overlay from June 3rd to August 2nd.
Last year, I wrote that Sue Frost had secured money to resurface two roads and rebuild the Rio Linda Blvd Bridge. The bridge project was done last year, as we’re all well aware.
The other two projects are 2.5 miles of Rio Linda Boulevard repaved from Elverta Road to Riego Road, and 1.6 miles of Elkhorn Boulevard will be repaved from Rio Linda Boulevard to East Levee Road. These projects were scheduled to begin in September 2019.
At Sue’s May 16th Town Hall meeting, she mentioned that the Elkhorn Blvd. project had been delayed by a year, to 2020. Of course, this perked up my ears, so I reached out to Sue’s Chief of Staff Matt Hedges to find out the details.
According to Matt, the portion of the funding for the project that came from SACOG (Sacramento Area Council of Governments) evaporated. This caused problems with many projects throughout the region, with many being cancelled altogether.
The Rio Linda Blvd. project is untouched, and will proceed as planned.
The Elkhorn Blvd. project had been delayed by a year, and shortened, spanning East Levee Road to 2nd street instead of Rio Linda Blvd. as we previously approved. To do this, they had to dip deeper into the gas tax funding than was previously anticipated.
To my surprise, I started seeing portable electronic signs on Elkhorn about a week ago announcing the delays for road work happening this month!
I looked up the Sacramento County Transportation Project Master List to see what was going on, and I found this project:
Elkhorn Blvd, from the Sacramento city limit (East Levee) to 2nd Street, repaving and ADA compliance upgrades. The number one lane both east and west bound on West Elkhorn Blvd will have alternating lane closures from 8:00AM until 3:30PM for construction of sidewalk ramps and asphalt overlay from June 3rd to August 2nd.
Again, I reached out to Matt Hedges who had just heard about the project beginning early that same morning.
Now, it sounds like the project will be taking place in phases; Phase 1 will be East Levee to the railroad crossing. Phase 2 will hopefully be the rest of the project, but at the very minimum it will include West 2nd to 2nd.
The upshot of all of this is that finally, some long awaited road work is getting done in the community, and on some streets that need the repairs badly.
