Four lanes for Palm Drive

Public Record, The, Aug 21, 1998

DESERT HOT SPRINGS -- A main thoroughfare to Palm Springs -Palm Drive -- is scheduled to be widened to four lanes, according to Allyn Waggle, CVAG associate director/ transportation.

Bids will be advertised in November and work will be started on the 4.6-mile stretch of road extending from Two Bunch Palms to the I-10 freeway in February, 1999.

Estimates are that the widening job will cost about $6.3 million , which will be funded by money derived for CVAG from a half cent sales tax under the Proposition A measure and from federal highway funds allocations. No funding will be provided directly by the City of Desert Hot Springs.

Only about a mile of the project is in the city limits of Desert Hot Springs -- that section south of Two Bunch Palms to Camino Ventura. The balance of Palm Drive is still in the unincorporated part of Riverside County.

At this time, no funds have been set aside for widening the bridges over the I-10 Freeway and the Union Pacific Railroad from two to four lanes. This, Waggle acknowledges, could pose a traffic problem -- dumping an ever growing number of vehicles from four lanes onto two-lane bridges. The railroad bridge is four tenths of a mile from the I-10 bridge.

Desert Hot Springs has eyed an extension of its city limits to I-10 in the past, coveting the increase in sales tax and real estate. tax revenues if and when the turnoffs from I-10 are developed commercially.

Palm Springs' "leapfrogged" its city limits over I-10 within the past five years, adding about 13 square miles.

Waggie said the money has been set aside by Cal Trans to widen the Ramon Road bridge at Thousand Palms and he indicated that CVAG will be pushing to acquire funds for the widened Palm Drive bridges over the railroad and I-10 Freeway.

The CVAG transportation official said bridge widenings are also needed at Indian Avenue in Palm Springs, Jefferson Street in Indio and Date Palm in Cathedral City.

Waggle spoke at a breakfast meeting of the Desert Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce at the Miracle Springs Hotel and Spa on Wednesday, August 12.