The Road More Heavily Traveled

Examining the girders that hold up Fords Bridge on the Umqua River in southwest Oregon, state inspectors noticed a gunpowder-like smell -- a telltale sign of metal fatigue. Then they saw stress cracks that ran like veins through the main supports.

It was March 2001, and for the next three weeks, 2,000 big rigs a day were forced off Interstate 5 while construction crews rebuilt the bridge. Many trucks took winding detours around the Cascade Range, adding hundreds of miles to their trips.

Along the West Coast, transportation costs increased by as much as $200 per shipment. California grocers, Oregon oil companies, Washington dairies and lumber mills in the Pacific Northwest all felt the financial pinch. The American Red Cross had to cut back on blood shipments.

Detours and disruptions on Interstate 5 are becoming increasingly common and costly. A vital commercial artery that crosses three states and links three countries, Interstate 5 is outdated, worn out and overwhelmed with traffic along much of its 1,381-mile length.

Two inexorable trends are pushing the highway toward ruin: steadily increasing traffic and relentless deterioration of its roadway, ramps, overpasses and bridges, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.

“Every bridge on the 5 in Oregon has the potential for a crisis,” said Paul R. Mather, who heads a regional office of the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Transportation planners say congestion drives up shipping costs and consumer prices and discourages tourism, putting a drag on the economies of California, Oregon and Washington.

Built in sections starting in 1947, the interstate links major manufacturing and population centers on the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego. It is the primary north-south route for trucks ferrying goods to and from Mexico, Canada and the West Coast’s six primary seaports.

Interstate 5 is also an important transportation corridor for wood products from Oregon and Washington as well as produce from California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the world’s richest agricultural regions.

“You can’t look at California and the West Coast without focusing on Interstate 5,” said former Caltrans Director Jeff Morales. “It is the backbone of the state. It is the backbone of the region.”

During the last 25 years, the number of vehicles has at least doubled on most sections of the highway. Yet apart from a few short stretches, the highway has not been substantially improved or widened.

For years, traffic engineers and planners have examined the border-to-border corridor in a patchwork fashion, repaving a few miles here or adding a lane there.

Now, a new alliance of government officials, planners and transportation experts from California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska is trying to fashion broad solutions. They hope a multi-state approach will generate the political heft needed to secure federal and state funding for comprehensive improvements.

The West Coast Corridor Coalition plans to consider alternative highways, tollways for trucks, improved rail service and better highway management -- including reversible lanes and staggered work hours for commuters. The improvements would cost an estimated $50 billion.

But the effort is late. The West Coast states are far behind others that have banded together to compete for funds, said Steve Erie, a UC San Diego professor who specializes in transportation. An alliance of 14 states on the East Coast began drumming up money for improving Interstate 95 more than a decade ago.

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Interstate 5 begins in San Ysidro, the nation’s busiest border crossing. There are 24 lanes for northbound motorists, seven for those headed into Mexico. It is the highway’s first bottleneck, the result of population growth, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the growing interdependence of Mexico and Southern California.

On weekdays, about 60,000 motorists -- almost double the volume of 25 years ago -- cross the border and head to Interstate 5. Most are commuting.

During morning rush hour, there can be hourlong delays to cross into the United States and more waiting once drivers hit the freeway. In the evening, it’s worse. Workers regularly spend up to 90 minutes in stop-and-go traffic returning to Tijuana from Chula Vista, National City and San Diego.

“I’d rather work late, take Highway 805 or go to the gym to avoid the crush,” said Mario C. Lopez, a U.S. citizen who lives in Mexico and works in Chula Vista as an aide to Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego).

Gary Gallegos, a former Caltrans director who heads the San Diego Assn. of Governments, said efforts are underway to build more gates at the border and improve roads in Mexico to prevent traffic from backing up onto Interstate 5.

“Traffic is expected to double in the next 20 years,” Gallegos said. “The question is, how do you get more out of what we have?”

Heading north, Interstate 5 becomes an urban freeway with four to six lanes in each direction as it hugs the San Diego County coast. The narrower sections are swamped with commuters, tourists, business travelers and trucks at rush hour and increasingly on weekends.

In the last 25 years, traffic on most sections of the highway in San Diego County has at least doubled. Although work is underway to widen a three-mile stretch near Del Mar, Caltrans officials predict that by 2015 the traffic volume will have nearly doubled again, requiring 20 lanes to control congestion.

“It reminds me of what I used to encounter in L.A., only the San Diego scenery is nicer,” said Baxter Scruggs, a mortgage banker whose 15-mile commute from Encinitas to his office in Kearney Mesa takes 45 minutes or more.

As it swings into Orange County, I-5 swells from 10 to 22 lanes between Ortega Highway and the Artesia and Riverside freeways, the result of recent widening and reconstruction that cost billions of dollars. The Orange County leg is the most-improved section of the entire route.

Still, congestion and backups are chronic. From 1975 to 2002, Interstate 5 traffic in Orange County doubled or tripled along many sections. At the El Toro Y -- where the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways merge -- the number of vehicles has jumped from 102,000 to 356,000 a day, enough to fill the Dodger Stadium parking lot more than 22 times.

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In southern Los Angeles County, the highway is primitive by today’s engineering standards. Between the Orange County line and downtown Los Angeles, the road shrinks to as few as six concrete lanes poured decades ago.

One of the worst pinch points is just east of downtown Los Angeles, where the great north-south artery turns from the Santa Ana Freeway into the Golden State Freeway and meets the Santa Monica, San Bernardino, Pomona, Hollywood and Long Beach freeways in a maze of interchanges and ramps. As many as 320,000 drivers a day squeeze into this two-mile bottleneck, often taking 25 minutes to get through at rush hour.

At one spot, travelers on Interstate 5 are funneled into two lanes as they merge with traffic from the Santa Monica and San Bernardino freeways, among the busiest in California. It is the eighth-most congested length of highway in the nation.

Caltrans plans to widen I-5 to at least five lanes in each direction from the Orange County line to the Long Beach Freeway -- about 15 miles. The project will cost $800 million, but will do little to relieve the bottleneck to the north. Caltrans officials say that that money might not be available until 2009 because of the state budget crisis.

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Leaving the Los Angeles Basin, Interstate 5 moves through the San Fernando Valley, where it is often transformed into a parking lot of idling vehicles during evening rush hour.

The road eventually reaches the Tejon Pass before descending into the San Joaquin Valley, the state’s agricultural heartland. Though there are often only two lanes in each direction, traffic usually moves freely between Southern and Northern California, holiday weekends excepted.

Interstate 5 eventually crosses into Oregon and enters the verdant Willamette Valley on its way to Portland. The most serious problem in Oregon is not congestion, but more than 100 obsolete bridges between Klamath Falls and Portland.

Some spans have been temporarily closed to the typical tractor trailers, which weigh about 64,000 pounds. For two years, commercial rigs weighing more than 105,000 pounds -- the so-called heavy haulers -- have been banned from much of Interstate 5 in southern Oregon.

The restrictions have forced rigs carrying construction equipment, steel and industrial machinery to take lengthy detours. In some cases, the heaviest trucks travel east of the Cascades then dip into California before heading back north on unrestricted sections of I-5 to reach destinations in southern Oregon.

“The bridges are a huge, huge problem. If we have to go over Mt. Hood, it can cost our customers hundreds of dollars more per load,” said Bob Wilhelm Jr., owner of Wilhelm Trucking and Rigging in Portland.

The state has proposed a $4-billion bond program to repair bridges across Oregon. About $830 million is needed to fix bridges on Interstate 5 alone.

The three-week closure of Fords Bridge over the south fork of the Umqua River in 2001 illustrated the risks of doing nothing.

“We got a glimpse of the future at Fords Bridge,” said Mather, the state transportation official. “We learned just how dependent we are on the 5.”

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In Portland, the aging Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River is one of the highway’s worst bottlenecks. The span connects Portland and fast-growing Vancouver, Wash.

State officials say the six-lane bridge, which is fed by three highways, needs to be rebuilt. There are two hours of heavy congestion each way during the morning and evening commutes, a situation aggravated by frequent lane closures due to repairs.

“I intentionally avoid the bridge at rush hour. You never know what is going to happen,” said the Rev. Kathleen Verigin of Portland, who uses the span to reach her church in Vancouver. “The lanes are narrow and often wet. Truck traffic can cause problems. It has taken me an hour to go 18 miles from church to home.”

In Washington, parts of the highway are two lanes in each direction. Its buttonhook exits and short on- and offramps are relics of the late 1950s. Traffic in and around Seattle now exceeds some of the busiest stretches in Los Angeles.

“It is unbelievable right now. They did not plan to become this kind of metropolis,” said Lisa Nelson, of Portland, who commutes 180 miles once a week to work in Seattle. The drive can take five hours or more.

“Having driven in Los Angeles and having driven in Seattle, there is not a whole lot of difference,” Nelson said.

“You can take an hour to go 10 miles on the 5, and there is really no other way to go.”