County to Get $520 Million in Road Funds

The California Transportation Commission on Thursday approved 10 new state highway projects for Orange County, including special freeway ramps to feed traffic directly from the Costa Mesa Freeway into John Wayne Airport’s planned new passenger terminal.

The overall transportation package for Orange County, which totals $520 million in the 1987-88 State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP), is $30 million more than the county’s previous allocation. County officials attributed the increase to vigorous lobbying in Sacramento and a recognition of the county’s serious transportation problems, especially the need to reconstruct and widen the Santa Ana Freeway, the linchpin of the county’s traffic-improvement plan.

The state commission added $47 million to the $200 million already earmarked for the Santa Ana Freeway project, which is scheduled to begin this fall between the San Diego and Costa Mesa freeways.

But the $1-billion widening project is still more than $400 million short if it is to be completed in this century, officials said.

Other projects approved Thursday for Orange County include:

- Ramps to feed traffic from the Costa Mesa Freeway into the new terminal at John Wayne Airport. The unusual ramps would be built parallel to the San Diego Freeway between the airport and the interchange between the Costa Mesa and San Diego freeways.

- Signal coordination in Laguna Beach.

- Sound walls on the Costa Mesa Freeway between Taft and Meats streets in the City of Orange, and along the Riverside Freeway between Euclid Avenue and Harbor Boulevard, and between Placentia Avenue and Sunkist Street.

- $857,000 for widening the eastbound connector between the Garden Grove Freeway and the Santa Ana Freeway, at the interchange with the Orange Freeway.

- $2 million for remodeling the Beach Boulevard-Santa Ana Freeway interchange.

- Widening MacArthur Boulevard in the vicinity of Ford Road and University Avenue in Irvine.

- Straightening and widening Laguna Canyon Road to four lanes between El Toro Road and the San Diego Freeway. (The project is not part of the planned straightening of the “big bend” area south of El Toro Road, which has been blocked by the state Coastal Commission.)

- New ramp work at Irvine Center Drive and the San Diego Freeway in Irvine.

Some of the new projects are also being financed with local developer contributions. Total cost figures for some of the projects were not immediately available.