Panel Rejects Plan to Alter Freeways in Tustin Area

A controversial plan that would have uprooted homes in North Tustin neighborhoods for freeway extensions was rejected Monday by a policy committee of the Orange County Transportation Commission.

However, North Tustin residents said they still intend to walk through their neighborhoods this week and distribute information protesting the plan that was designed to alleviate traffic bottlenecks near junctions of the Costa Mesa, Santa Ana and Garden Grove freeways.

Noting that the full commission must approve the panel’s recommendation at its July 28 meeting, Carolyn Shrider, president of the Foothill Communities Assn., said: “We’re elated by the vote, but they (panel members) don’t have the final say. We don’t want to take any chances that the full commission will do something different than this.”

Connectors Opposed

In its Monday vote, the panel voted to remove from consideration five potential freeway connectors that would have required highway engineers to tunnel under North Tustin or remove hundreds of expensive homes. Each of the connectors would have cost $218 million or more.

Committee members said the connectors, one of which would have extended the Garden Grove Freeway past its current junction with the Costa Mesa Freeway, were simply too expensive, too politically controversial and too disruptive to the community to be practical.

They also said studies showed that such connectors or freeway extensions would not alleviate traffic congestion enough to be worth the trouble.

Monday’s vote was significant because the full Transportation Commission is expected to go along with the committee’s action during a public hearing later this month.

New Routes Called Solution

The committee decided that, for the time being, the solution to the bottleneck problem rests with seeking routes for two new freeways--the Eastern and Foothill corridors. Also, the panel supported installation of a transit guideway on the Santa Ana Freeway, widening the Santa Ana Freeway, and extending the Orange (57) Freeway from its current terminus at the Garden Grove Freeway south to the San Diego Freeway.

Shrider said that about 500 volunteers will walk through North Tustin neighborhoods this week, urging people to attend the commission hearing despite Monday’s action.

Shrider, a real estate broker, contended that the commission should not even consider freeway connectors or extensions because to do so has already lowered property values in neighborhoods that would be uprooted by such projects.

The final route alignments of the planned Eastern and Foothill freeways are not expected to be adopted until next year or early 1988. The Eastern would generally extend from the Riverside Freeway in Santa Ana Canyon to the Santa Ana Freeway in east Tustin. The Foothill Freeway would extend from south Orange County to the Eastern, along hills near Mission Viejo, El Toro and Lake Forest.

The committee’s decision to reject freeway extensions through North Tustin came after months of sometimes bitter clashes among panel members.

Pleased by Consensus

At one point, member Richard Edgar, a Tustin councilman who also sits on the full Transportation Commission, argued that if critics of such options got their way, then he should get his by having the panel reject the planned widening of the Santa Ana Freeway. The widening, he argued, would increase traffic in Tustin.

Following Monday’s meeting, however, Edgar said he was pleased that the panel had reached a consensus instead of pitting one member against another.

The controversial freeway extensions were never proposed by any elected official but had appeared in engineering studies as options that should be considered by the panel.