A plan to build two wildlife underpasses and a wildlife overpass across North Oracle Road appears on track now that local and state officials resolved a dispute over how to pay for it.
Under the agreement, the Regional Transportation Authority will pay the state gradually for its work designing and building the project, rather than pay it all upfront as the Arizona Department of Transportation originally requested.
The crossings are to be built as six miles of Oracle Road are widened from four to six lanes between Tangerine Road and the Pinal County line.
The crossings are designed to prevent cars on the busy highway from hitting black bears, mountain lions and other large mammals traveling between the Tortolita and Catalina mountains.
The new agreement calls on the Tucson-area authority to first pay $500,000 to ADOT toward the $8.25 million project's design cost. As that is spent, RTA would reimburse ADOT to keep the fund at that level. Once the state starts seeking bids to build the project, the RTA would up its total contribution to $2 million, then reimburse the state over time as it spends construction dollars. Construction is planned to start in 2013.
People are also reading…
"RTA found an option that worked for us and worked for them," ADOT spokesman Tim Tait said.
This financing scheme is similar to how RTA and the state have paid for the new Twin Peaks Interchange at Interstate 10 on the Tucson area's northwest side, said Jim DeGrood, RTA's transportation services director.
"It makes sense to us from a standpoint that we don't tie up all of our money prior to the project going forward," DeGrood said. "There is a substantial financial commitment on our part that they can feel good about as well."
For more than half a year, the two sides were at loggerheads over how to pay for the wildlife-crossing project. ADOT temporarily removed the wildlife crossings from its broader plan for widening Oracle.
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and environmentalists were concerned the crossings project might be canceled.
But, said director Carolyn Campbell of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, "I suspected it was bureaucratic inertia. It seems like when they actually sat down, talked about it face to face, it took about five minutes to get it resolved."
Huckelberry said last week he is very pleased to have received a recent letter from RTA Director Gary Hayes announcing the agreement. He "absolutely" believes the crossings will be built, Huckelberry said.
Contact reporter Tony Davis at tdavis@azstarnet.com or 806-7746.
