Pima County hopes to start Valencia Road widening west of I-19 by end of 2025

Don’t expect a lot of major corridor work in unincorporated Pima County in the coming year.

Without bond dollars or significant Regional Transportation Authority funding, the Pima County Transportation Department doesn’t have much money to spend on major projects. Instead, the agency has shifted gears to focus on residential street maintenance rather than the big projects it has tackled in recent years.

“Our program used to have three or four really major corridors that we’d be reconstructing, such as La Cañada, where you’re rebuilding two miles of roadway and widening it to four lanes,” said Kathryn Skinner, director of the Transportation Department. “That’s not what our program looks like anymore. Our program is a lot more small-scale projects. Usually we’re getting federal funding to help support the implementation.”

The county’s biggest planned project is an extension of Sunset Road from Interstate 10 to River Road. While the county is paying for the project with funding from county impact fees, the RTA and the federal government, the project is being managed by the Arizona Department of Transportation as part of the ongoing widening of Interstate 10 between Ruthrauff and Ina roads.

The project is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2025.

Another major project in the design phase is a 1.3-mile widening of Valencia Road between Mission Road and Camino de la Tierra.

The county received a $20 million federal RAISE grant for the project and will supplement that with impact fees.

The county hopes to bring a contractor on board in the spring and partner with them through the design phase, with construction starting at the end of 2025 or early 2026.

Valencia is the metro area’s southernmost major east-west corridor, but west of Interstate 19, the road narrows from three lanes in each direction to two lanes in each direction, which is a “real pinch point,” Skinner said.

“That corridor needs some capacity,” Skinner said. “It’s probably the roadway that we get the most complaints on about congestion.”

Otherwise, next year’s projects will mostly be funded by federal grants. Some will be safety-related, such as a new HAWK pedestrian light on Palo Verde Road south of Ajo Way.

Skinner said the county has also been successful in landing various federal grants to pay for projects such as a new bridge on Silverbell Road over Blanco Wash in the Avra Valley area that should be wrapped up in early 2025. The old bridge was in such disrepair that the county had to close it, according to Skinner. Some other bridge projects are in the works, including a rebuilding one in Ajo and widening a couple of bridges from one lane to two lanes in the Madera Canyon area south of Tucson.

“There’s a lot of very small projects,” Skinner said. “They’re not very exciting, but (we have) about 18 projects that are in some form of development.”

The county is continuing repair and repaving efforts on streets in unincorporated areas under its 10-year PAYGO (Pay-As-You-Go) program. Now in its sixth year, PAYGO has repaved 382 miles of arterial and collector streets and more than 500 miles of residential streets, according to Skinner.

In the current fiscal year, about $24 million is going toward the PAYGO program. In the next fiscal year, that number is projected to jump to $26.5 million, Skinner said.

She said that starting this year, the county is starting to redirect about one-third of those dollars for preservation treatments because maintaining repaired roads is less expensive than rebuilding neglected ones.

The funding for the PAYGO program comes from state road dollars (aka HURF funds) as well as county general fund dollars. As a result of the program, about 70 percent of the county’s roads are now considered to be in at least “good” condition, according to county metrics.