MTA RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GRIDLOCK LACK FUNDS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A $4.7 million MTA study completed over the last 2 1/2 years recommends $1 billion worth of widening for the Antelope Valley Freeway, $815 million worth to Interstate 5 and $3 billion for Highway 138, and an entirely new east-west Antelope Valley expressway.

The problem is, there's no money.

``Funding is a big problem,'' said Brian Lin, the MTA's San Fernando/North County Project Team Manager.

The North County Corridors Study recommends highway work to be done by 2010 and by 2015, but the MTA's first attempt to get initial funding was quashed last summer when state officials canceled consideration of taking on more highway projects.

Local officials said the highway improvements are both vital and apparently years away.

``We need this desperately,'' Palmdale Councilman Mike Dispenza said. But he also joked to a reporter, ``Don't write about anything we won't see in our lifetime.''

The study, which will be subject of community meetings Monday in Palmdale and Tuesday in Santa Clarita, is expected to be put before the MTA board for approval in July. If the state budget situation turns around within the next two years or so, the study can be used as a basis for winning funding for highway work, officials said.

``This is the most comprehensive study ever done (for the Antelope Valley),'' said Mark Bozigian, Lancaster's assistant to the city manager. ``It serves as a blueprint. Funding is always going to be a problem. If we didn't do this, we'd be years behind.''

A disadvantage for the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita highway projects is that they must compete for money against other Southern California proposals such as widening Interstate 5 through metropolitan Los Angeles and Interstate 710 to Long Beach.

``When our project is put beside other projects, all of sudden you can never find money to do it - it's competition,'' Lin said.

One possibility that could ease some local traffic congestion at an affordable price tag, Linn said, is modifying the Antelope Valley Freeway's car-pool lanes so that they both run in the same direction - southbound during morning rush hour, northbound at night.

That could be done by adding barriers between the carpool lanes and the other lanes, with gates opened and closed every morning and evening by Caltrans workers, Linn said. So-called ``reversible'' carpool lanes are already used in San Diego, he said.

Linn said he didn't know the cost, but it would probably be well under $10 million.

An option for the proposed east-west High Desert Corridor expressway that the study suggests looking into and was already recommended in legislation by state Sen. W.J. ``Pete'' Knight, R-Palmdale, is building it as a toll road.

Knight introduced legislation last year to authorize a study into whether private companies could build the expressway as a toll road, but the bill stalled n the Legislature.

``He still feels that probably the only way we'll ever get the High Desert Corridor (expressway) built is with toll roads,'' Knight aide Rex Moen said.

The MTA's recommendations for what to do by 2010 include widening the Antelope Valley Freeway to a uniform three lanes between Canyon Country and Palmdale, plus creating three reversible car-pool lanes in the center.

By 2010, the study also recommends widening Highway 138 to four lanes between Palmdale and the San Bernardino County line, as well as buying land for the first segment of the proposed High Desert Corridor expressway on the route of Avenue P-8 from the Antelope Valley Freeway to 50th Street East.

The proposed 2025 plan calls for creating the new High Desert Corridor expressway from Palmdale east along the route of Avenue P-8 and Palmdale Boulevard into Victorville.