Lowest El Toro ‘Y’ Bid is 28% Less Than OCTA Budgeted : Reconstruction: Officials say the savings on this project will help keep others on schedule despite lower sales tax revenue.

SANTA ANA —  The prolonged Southern California recession has a silver lining: low freeway construction costs, if you can call $55.78 million “cheap.”

That’s the low bid submitted for the upcoming reconstruction of the El Toro “Y” interchange, and it’s $22 million lower than was budgeted. Road work is expected to begin within a month. Total cost of the project, including design and right-of-way acquisition, is expected to top $108 million.

The lowest bid was offered by Rancho Cordova-based C.C. Myers Inc., the same firm that built half of the toll road that is opening this weekend in Foothill Ranch. If Myers’ bid is upheld, the company will have edged out six other firms in what officials described as an unusually “tense” and close bidding war.

The savings from the low bid--about 28%--top that experienced on other freeway projects during the recession, officials said. The previous record was about 17%, on the Santa Ana Freeway widening project.

“Over the last three years or so, projects have been coming in a lot lower than the engineers’ official estimates,” said Tom Bogard, freeway project manager for the Orange County Transportation Authority. “We expected this one to come in about 8% below, but not the 28% we see now.”

Bogard said he was especially surprised because recent economic indexes used by officials to monitor construction prices showed that costs were back on an upward trend after the recession-induced downward spiral.

The savings don’t necessarily mean there will be extra money for other road projects. The reconstruction effort is funded by Measure M, a half-cent sales tax for traffic improvements adopted by county voters in November, 1990.

But the weak economy has translated into lower-than-anticipated sales tax revenue. So construction savings help OCTA keep other projects on schedule despite the revenue problem.

The El Toro “Y” project at the confluence of the Santa Ana and San Diego Freeways includes widening the interchange and providing new ramps next to freeway lanes that feed traffic to local surface streets--sometimes starting more than a mile before reaching such a street. Counting ramps, the confluence will be 22 lanes wide at one point, making it one of the largest highway interchanges in the world.