Besides slashing payrolls and squeezing personal finances, the gnawing recession has slowed the flow of road-building funds to a trickle throughout Riverside County, officials said.

Nearly bone-dry coffers – combined with fears that key road, ramp and bridge projects could grind to a halt – will prompt a regional transportation agency to ask voters in November to nearly double the amount of money it can borrow against future revenues.

"We’ve had a real economic crisis during that time frame," Anne Mayer, executive director of the Riverside County Transportation Commission, said during a recent presentation to Lake Elsinore area government and business leaders. "We’ve been on an absolute roller coaster."

The ballot measure is seen as a way to keep road improvement projects on track despite plummeting local and state revenues.

Funds collected by a regional developer fee program are nearly depleted as new home and commercial construction have all but evaporated. And annual sales tax revenues that totaled $131 million two years ago dropped to $122.6 million last year. They are expected to fall even further to about $106 million this year, Mayer said.

"The difficulty will be keeping these projects going," she said.

With a series of costly road construction projects in the planning stages set to begin, officials expect to place a measure on the November ballot to increase the amount the agency can borrow against future county sales tax revenues.

Approval of the measure would allow the agency to increase its maximum debt limit from $525 million to $975 million.

Because the amount of the half-cent sales tax authorized by voters under Measure A would not change, a majority of voters would need to cast "yes" votes to pass the proposed measure, Mayer said following the Lake Elsinore Valley Chamber of Commerce presentation.

Increasing the tax rate would require approval from two-thirds of the voters who cast ballots in an election.

By late next year, the number of major projects that are prepped to begin construction would push the costs well beyond the existing $525 million cap, Meyer said.

Many of those projects – which include widening Interstate 215 and the first phase of a new interchange along the boundary of Temecula and Murrieta – have been in the planning stages for years.

Two of those projects – which call for adding one lane in each direction on Interstate 215 from Murrieta to Perris – are slated to begin next year and in 2012. They are two parts of a four-segment improvement plan that will stretch nearly 30 miles and is expected to together cost about $445 million.

Ground was broken in June on a $29 million project to upgrade a clogged, chaotic interchange at I-215 in Perris. That work is Advertisement

[ Chatton and Associates ] expected to eliminate long lines of cars that back up on the freeway. The work will include replacing12 traffic control signs with five signal lights along Fourth Street and Redlands Avenue.

The I-215 widening work is aimed at easing traffic bottlenecks that have existed for years in Murrieta and Menifee. Traffic is currently restricted to two lanes in each direction in that sprawling area. A final segment of the I-215 improvements would occur in the Riverside and San Bernardino areas.

Plans call for work to begin next year in the segment from Murrieta Hot Springs Road to Scott Road. Current estimates call for that work to be finished in 2014. The next segment, which would occur between Scott Road in Menifee to Nuevo Road in Perris, is slated to begin in 2012 and take about three years to complete, according to commission reports.

Measure A and countywide developer fees would also be tapped for the first phase of a $31 million project aimed at eliminating long lines of southbound vehicles that slowly exit Interstate 15 at Winchester Road in Temecula.

That work – which would siphon traffic off the freeway and onto Jefferson Avenue north of the existing interchange – is expected to begin next year and take about two years to complete, according to city documents.

"That is a very high priority," Mayer said after her Lake Elsinore chamber presentation.

The second phase of that project – which calls for the construction of a new interchange near Cherry Street – is expected to cost about $170.4 million. That work is not expected to begin for several years.

Other projects included on the transportation commission’s "near term" list include improvements to state Highway 91 and extending Metrolink commuter services to the city of Perris. That service extension would require the construction of a Perris bus terminal and a commuter rail platform.

Projects on the commission’s "longer range" list include the northernmost I-215 improvements, adding lanes to Interstate 15 from Murrieta to San Bernardino County and realigning a segment of state Highway 79.

Mayer said increasing her agency’s debt limit would allow key road improvements to occur during a lull between growth booms. It would also provide construction jobs that could help pull the region out of the recession.

It’s also hoped that competition for scarce road construction projects will result in lower cost bids than those received years ago when the economy was stronger and contractors were busier, she said.

"We’re spending the (existing) money, but we wish we had more. There’s more projects than we have money for," Mayer said. "And we need the jobs. The economy will come back. We need these projects now. There are a lot of positives here."