The Last Word : Radio Caltrans Turns Drivers On to Construction Situation

G-o-o-o-o-o-d afternoon, Orange County!

It began Wednesday: Caltrans’ effort to portray itself as part of the solution and not the problem. And it will continue as long as drivers are willing to listen to a 3 1/2-minute radio loop taped daily by two Caltrans employees calling themselves Cathy and Chris.

Tune in for the latest on construction work, lane closures and how Caltrans is spending taxpayer dollars at one of the county’s major choke-points--the interchange of the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways. Twenty-four hours a day at 530 on your AM dial. Over and over and over. And over.

It seemed like a better idea than roadside signs proclaiming “Your Government Dollars at Work,” said Caltrans spokesman Albert Miranda. “We thought there were already enough signs--that we didn’t want to distract people from driving.”

And after all, Miranda said, the start-up costs of the radio show were only $10,000.

Caltrans broke ground in November at the Santa Ana-Costa Mesa freeway interchange for a six-year, $134-million face lift and widening to better accommodate the 200,000-plus vehicles that crawl through the area daily, Miranda said.

The radio show inaugurated Wednesday is designed to supply drivers with the latest information on that project. The tape will be revised every afternoon just as the commuter crush begins backing up, Miranda said.

“We’ll probably see a lot more of this kind of stuff,” said Keith Gilbert, a spokesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California. “Low-power radio like this does a good job of informing motorists, but the information must be accurate and relevant.”

The broadcasts are Caltrans’ latest effort in a never-ending public information battle to convince Southern California drivers that the state Department of Transportation is really on their side.

“From our standpoint, we need to turn around the image,” Miranda said.

Recalling the radio newscaster in San Francisco who used to cite “the Caltrans commander of delays” in his freeway traffic reports, Miranda grimaced.

“We want Orange County working with us instead of against us,” he said.

The struggle to communicate directly with drivers is one that reaches back almost to the birth of the freeway system.

Caltrans erected its first experimental electronic message boards along the Santa Monica Freeway in 1973 to warn of impending traffic jams. Today, four such boards flash in Orange County, and there are another 40 in Los Angeles County, with more on the way, Caltrans officials say.

Early on, however, the boards were derided by some motorists who disliked the environmental and fuel-saving slogans frequently displayed during the administration of Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

“It left a bad taste in many people’s mouths that still lingers,” said Frank Lehr, manager of the Los Angeles Traffic Operations Center, the nerve center for Caltrans’ Southern California freeway information network. “Now we put up strictly traffic-related messages.”

And then there’s CHIN.

For “at least 17 years,” Caltrans has operated a freeway hazards and construction advisory telephone line for motorists, called the California Highway Information Network, a department spokeswoman said. CHIN Divides the state into northern and southern zones. The most recent message on the Southland CHIN line was dated Feb. 29.

“Hmmm, that message is updated as conditions warrant, usually every two hours,” said Tracey Weatherby, a Caltrans spokeswoman in Sacramento. “It could be that road conditions haven’t changed.”

Hmmm.

First Traffic Transmitter

The first permanent radio transmitter devoted exclusively to traffic reports was installed at Los Angeles International Airport in 1972 to advise drivers about parking, said William B. Jackson, president of Locrad Inc., a private firm that installs such transmitters.

Caltrans has been using similar transmitters for years to warn drivers of hazardous road conditions in mountainous areas, a spokeswoman said.

So when the time came for major construction on two of California’s most congested freeways and Caltrans began casting about for ways to fend off the public outcry that the work was almost certain to provoke, radio seemed a proven good idea.

“We wanted to get the word out as quickly as possible to commuters about construction to help us with traffic,” Miranda said.

So, on Wednesday, a 50-foot tower at the Edinger Avenue on-ramp to the northbound Costa Mesa Freeway began beaming the 10-watt signal’s cheery message up to 10 miles away. “Hi, Orange County. I’m Chris. I’m Cathy. . . . “

If all goes well, Caltrans plans to operate two similar low-power radio transmitters in the San Fernando Valley along the the world’s busiest freeway, the Ventura, now in the midst of a 19-month widening project.

Encroaching on Disneyland

Motorists stalled there will be able to tune in to 1610 AM.

In Orange County, Caltrans discovered during a recent test broadcast that the range of its transmitter here will require some shrinking because it encroaches on Disneyland turf, said Jackson, whose firm installed the Orange County transmitter for Caltrans.

Last fall, the city of Anaheim installed its own 10-watt transmitter broadcasting traffic information on approaches to the Magic Kingdom, city spokesman Patrick Denny said.

Both parties appear ready to compromise on signals that will meet somewhere around Chapman Avenue, Jackson said.

“Either they’ll make theirs more efficient, or we’ll lower ours,” said Joseph Provenza, a Caltrans engineer. “We found we overpowered them a little.”

For the present, Chris and Cathy--a.k.a. Albert Miranda and Lynn Nesbitt--will tape the daily report on a small Tascam recorder. About 3 p.m. every day, someone will jump into a Caltrans truck, drive to the Edinger on-ramp and pop the updated tape into a player housed in the transmitter tower.

“We’ll be getting a nicer unit later on,” Miranda said.