YMPO seeks to widen Highway 95
The executive board of the Yuma Metropolitan Planning Organization began to gear up to advocate for a widened Highway 95 — at least to the entrance for Yuma Proving Ground — at its Thursday meeting.
Yuma Deputy Mayor Gary Knight, now a member of the Arizona State Transportation Board, said that board’s May 18 meeting will be its last before it votes on the final five-year construction plan for Arizona State Department of Transportation projects.
The estimated cost for broadening the highway from two lanes to a four-lane divided highway is $107 million, but the board has nearly $1 billion in uncommitted money in the preliminary plan, so the board is hoping to secure at least some of the funding needed for the longawaited project.
Knight said its chances of being approved by the board could be better if it’s instead done as a five-lane highway, including a continuous leftturn lane.
“There’s been some comment that it might be cheaper to do five lanes, than divided, between YPG and Yuma, and I quite frankly don’t care whether it’s five lanes or divided, I’ll take either one. Five lanes would be fine, whatever gets it done quickest and if it’s cheaper to do five lanes, I’m fine with that,” he said.
He’s given all board members a copy of a YMPOcommissioned drone video of heavy morning traffic on the highway as many of YPG’s 2,500 civilian employees head to the base, one of the military’s largest testing sites.
Knight said the project could be put into the ADOT five-year plan to be potentially funded by a federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant, rather than state dollars, if a successful application is submitted.
“We’re trying everything we can think of to get funding,” he said. “If we can at least get it in the five-year plan it’ll be easier to get the funding, at some point, and it’ll be a lot easier to move forward,” he said.
He urged other executive board members to come and testify on Yuma County’s behalf.
“It would be very helpful, for us to have — I believe Mayor (Doug) Nicholls (of Yuma) will be there to speak, and Col. (Ross) Poppenberger (YPG commander), probably Paul (Ward, YMPO executive director) again — that’s probably the time for the advocates for 95 in order to get it on the fiveyear-plan, that would be the time to be there, at the next meeting,” Knight said.
Also on Thursday:
• Ward said the YMPOhosted Yuma Regional Transportation Summit, held April 12 at Pivot Point Conference Center, drew a dozen participants from Yuma County, Yuma, San Luis, Somerton, Wellton and ADOT for a summit where the jurisdictions submitted the unfunded transportation projects they felt were most needed by their communities.
He said he hadn’t compiled them into a list yet, but would by the next board meeting May 31. “Some of them are very, very detailed and some of them are not quite so detailed, and so obviously there’s a fair amount of work that needs to be done at staff level before I can bring this back to you.” he said.
The conference is intended to be a first step toward putting together a regional transportation plan for which area leaders can then look for funding, in the form of a voter-approved sales tax or some other method. Another conference will be held to go over any ideas which were missed at the first meeting, likely later this year.
Both houses of the Legislature have approved a bill allowing for an increase in vehicle license fees to raise money for the state Department of Public Safety, which could then free up more Highway Revenue User Fund revenue to be sent to local governments as first intended, but Knight said there’s a “big question mark” whether Gov. Doug Ducey will sign it.
Ward said, “What I was getting from the members of the conference we held is, we don’t have enough money to do what it is that we need to do, let along what we want to do, and more importantly – I don’t want to prejudge how we get that money, there are various options out there, obviously. Some of them may be available to us depending on what happens with the state Legislature between now and then, and it’s a moving target.”
Many of the submitted proposals from the conference are concerned with specific intersections, while others take on regional questions such as connecting Yuma and South County to the Foothills and East County towns, or a more direct route between the port of entry in downtown San Luis and Interstate 8, he said.
• The board approved the agency’s 2017 audit.
YMPO is a state-recognized regional planning organization for Yuma County which coordinates how federal and state highway funding is spent countywide.
Yuma Sun staff writer Blake Herzog can be reached at (928) 539-6856 or bherzog@yumasun.com.
GOYANG, South Korea — After a year of tensions, the first North-South Korea summit in more than a decade began Friday with a handshake.
Surrounded by bodyguards and other members of his delegation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un emerged right on cue from a large building on the northern side of the border in the truce village of Panmunjom, walked down a wide flight of stairs and strolled confidently toward South Korean President Moon Jae-in to begin the historic meeting.
Smiling broadly and exchanging greetings, the two shook hands for a long time, exchanging greetings and looking from outward appearances like old friends.
Moon had awaited Kim’s arrival at “Freedom House,” a building on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone. As soon as he saw Kim come out, he walked to meet him at the border so that their handshake would be at the most symbolic of locations, each leader standing on his side of the military demarcation line that separates North from South.
Their hands still clasped, Moon invited the North Korean leader into the South for the first time ever, just one step over a line marked by an ankle-high strip of concrete.
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