Local News in Brief : Countywide : Additional $20 Million Needed for Road Work

Hundreds of miles of new roads in southern Orange County are scheduled to be built in the next two years at an estimated cost of $340 million, but another $20 million is needed to fill in gaps in needed roads, a report released Thursday said.

The report by the county Environmental Management Agency, to be considered next Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, is a compilation of road-building programs under way or planned.

It notes that in the Santa Ana Mountains foothill area, an additional 161 lane-miles of roads will be built at a cost of about $200 million by 1990. In the coastal area of south county, an additional 118 lane-miles of roads will be built at a cost of about $140 million.

A lane-mile is one lane of a road for a mile. Thus a one-mile stretch of a four-lane road would have four lane miles.

“However, there is need to design and complete construction of certain short arterial highway gaps,” the report said. Most of the gaps are in the coastal area. To fill them in will cost an estimated $20 million.

The gaps include a section of Aliso Creek Road, between Laguna Canyon Road and El Toro Road, parts of Alicia Parkway and of Cabot Road, and portions of Stonehill Drive.

The report was in response to a request by Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Thomas F. Riley for a study of key non-freeway roads to be built or improved by 1990 and a plan to quicken the building of other roads in south county.