A number of upgrades to Highway 49, including new roundabouts, evacuation lanes and widening are in the 2026 CalTrans plans for Nevada County and will be the topic of discussion at this month’s upcoming Community Forum on Friday, February 20th. This free, one hour event will be held on the Sierra College Nevada County campus from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 in the auditorium, room N-12. Terry McAteer, former County Superintendent of Schools and Steering Committee member for Community Forum, will serve as moderator of this month’s discussion.
CalTrans Project Manager Sam Vandell, Jeff Johnson a CalTrans Engineer and Mike Woodman, Executive Director of the Nevada County Transportation Commission, will be on hand to discuss five specific projects that CalTrans is looking at, which include the widening of Highway 49 between McKnight and La Barr Meadows Rd., providing a fire evacuation lane on Highway 49 in South County, improvements to the Highway 49 and Highway 20 interchange in Nevada City, a new roundabout near the Rood Center and a new planned roundabout in downtown Grass Valley.
“While CalTrans is planning all of these improvements, it’s also going to cause a lot of disruption in traffic flow in a number of areas within our county,” said McAteer. “It’s going to be a good conversation with all of these guys and interesting to hear about the timeline of these projects.” McAteer said that the discussion will most likely also include questions concerning the installation of the two new roundabouts on Highway 49 south of the Bear River.
Sponsored by the Sierra College Foundation’s Nevada County campus, the Community Forum hosts an hour-long, in-depth speaker series several times a year, discussing local issues and topics of interest to both our community and neighboring counties. Each of these speakers series is free, open to the public and free parking is provided on the campus.