Picking Up Speed : Freeway Projects Proceeding in Fast Lane

The traffic watch never stops. As you race to work on the San Diego Freeway at a breathless 5 m.p.h. this morning, you will find some new barriers along the median strip in Irvine. No, that is not a new demilitarized zone for stressed-out commuters--Caltrans is installing ride-share lanes.

Those of you traveling farther north on the same freeway--up around the Springdale Street bridge--will encounter a strip of white concrete in the median that has never been used. It may look like a new runway for the overflow from John Wayne Airport, but it is actually another section of new car-pool lane that Caltrans says will be ready for use in only two months.

When the $57-million widening of the San Diego Freeway (Interstate 405) from eight to 10 lanes began 13 months ago, it marked the beginning of a new era in highway construction for Orange County. It is an era that is expected to contrast sharply with the last decade, when only two miles of freeway were added to the county’s highway network.

Today, county motorists are seeing the first of a long list of highway projects taking shape.

California Department of Transportation officials say that, by November, motorists will be able to use a three-mile stretch of a new, northbound car-pool lane on the San Diego Freeway between Springdale Street in Westminster and the San Gabriel River Freeway (Interstate 605) at the border between Orange and Los Angeles counties.

That three-mile stretch is a small part of the two-phase, 28-mile widening of the San Diego Freeway between San Gabriel River Freeway in Seal Beach and the Santa Ana Freeway (Interstate 5) in Irvine. The first phase involves installation of car-pool lanes, due to be completed next spring, between I-605 and the Corona del Mar Freeway (California 73).

The second phase, which won’t be finished until 1990, involves installation of car-pool lanes between the Corona del Mar Freeway in Costa Mesa and Santa Ana Freeway in Irvine. Workers began erecting barriers and anti-gawk boards for the second phase last month.

Other major projects that are either under way or about to start in the county include:

* Widening of the Costa Mesa Freeway (California 55) between Dyer Road and the Santa Ana Freeway interchange. Started last year and scheduled for completion in the fall of 1989, this project includes widening the safety buffer zone between the ride-sharing lanes and regular lanes, as well as adding auxiliary lanes for exiting to off-ramps. Several bridge reconstructions and newly configured ramps are included in the project. The first of these--a rebuilt on-ramp at McFadden Street and a reconstructed off-ramp at Dyer Road--will be completed in the next two weeks, according to Caltrans spokesman Albert Miranda.

* Widening of the Costa Mesa Freeway from the Santa Ana Freeway interchange to 17th Street. This will not begin until the winter of 1989 and will be finished two years later.

* Extending the Costa Mesa Freeway about 2.3 miles south from its current Bristol Street terminus to 19th Street. Delayed numerous times, this project now is scheduled to start in February and be completed by July, 1991. Total cost: $37 million. The extension will be built in the weed-strewn ditch that parallels Newport Boulevard. Seven streets that now cross the ditch will become bridges; freeway traffic headed for the beach will surface via exit ramps onto Newport Boulevard between Bay and 19th streets. Some Costa Mesa residents have supported the project for years to help relieve traffic, but others say traffic on cross streets on both sides of the ditch will experience more congestion.

* Construction of new connectors between the Costa Mesa Freeway and the Santa Ana Freeway. This project is not scheduled to begin until the summer of 1991 and won’t be finished until the summer of 1994. The $92-million price tag includes special transitway connectors so that ride-share vehicles will never have to leave special lanes reserved for them to move from the northbound Costa Mesa Freeway to the northbound Santa Ana Freeway, and from the southbound Santa Ana to the southbound Costa Mesa.

* Reconstruction of Santa Ana Freeway ramps at Jeffrey Road, Jamboree Boulevard and Tustin Ranch Road. The project will begin next month. Total cost: $35 million.

* Widening the Santa Ana Freeway between the San Diego Freeway in Irvine and the Costa Mesa Freeway. Due to take three years starting in October, 1989, this project currently is in the right-of-way acquisition phase. The $104-million price tag includes doubling the width of the freeway from its current six lanes to 12 regular lanes, plus two ride-sharing lanes (one in each direction), and auxiliary lanes for exiting to off-ramps.

The county’s three planned toll roads--in the San Joaquin Hills and the Eastern and Foothill transportation corridors--are in the midst of environmental studies.

Construction is expected to begin on the first of the three--in the San Joaquin Hills corridor--in 1989, despite continuing howls of protest from the city of Laguna Beach and environmental groups.

On the widened San Diego Freeway, rather than opening the new car-pool lanes all at once Caltrans plans to open the 28-mile stretch in sections, as ongoing construction conditions permit.

The opening of the three-mile northbound segment from Westminster to Seal Beach is an example. All that remains to be done on that stretch, officials explain, is restriping and installation of signs and a new median guard rail, but some of the materials haven’t arrived yet.

Unlike the car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway, the new lanes on the San Diego Freeway will have overhead signs to warn motorists of their special nature, and four-foot safety zones will separate them from adjacent traffic.

Most of the southbound portion of the project will remain closed until next spring for two reasons, officials say: It is needed as a work-staging area, and it would be too dangerous to merge fast-moving vehicles from sections of completed car-pool lanes into slower traffic in areas where the car-pool lanes are unfinished. The northbound lanes, they point out, feed into a section of freeway that already widens where the car-pool lanes end.

Since last summer, about 30 construction workers have toiled almost day and night to produce a ribbon of concrete between Springdale Street and I-605 that can be seen through gaps in the anti-gawk boards put up by Caltrans to stop rubbernecking.

“The most difficult part of the job has been the constrained area that the crews have had to work in,” said Wally Carroll, a Caltrans operations supervisor. Work crews have had to dig out the center divider, remove tons of dirt, and grade and lay a new roadbed in a 30-foot-wide working space.

Carroll said the construction has not caused any traffic accidents. In fact, he said, the only mishap so far involved a piece of equipment that caught fire and burned some anti-gawk boards.

Six to eight months from now, Carroll added, another section of the northbound car-pool lane probably will be opened between Beach Boulevard and the Springdale Street bridge.

“The project is on schedule,” he said.

That is especially good news because last year Caltrans was plagued by delays that at one point had held up 13 of the county’s top 20 transportation improvement projects.

Kia Mortasavi, a project analyst at the Orange County Transportation Commission, said the commission’s goal is to keep a list of highway projects “on the shelf, ready to go” as funding becomes available.

Last month a consultant’s report to the commission said that some projects face delays because the new Caltrans district office in Orange County is having trouble attracting sufficient staff.

But Caltrans District Director Keith McKean said this week that the consultant’s report was wrong.

While some positions are not filled yet, McKean said, any work that cannot be performed locally is being done at Caltrans’s office in Los Angeles and staffing therefore is not a factor.

The Costa Mesa Freeway extension, for example, is being supervised by a Caltrans engineer in Los Angeles.

McKean said some Caltrans positions in Orange County will not be filled until later this year or early 1989, but he said that was planned and comes as no surprise.

But he did acknowledge that some Caltrans employees have turned down jobs in Orange County because of high housing costs and commuting distances.

FREEWAY PROJECTS

I-405 widening from I-605 to State 73. Under way, portion of car-pool lane to open by November.

I-405 widening from State 73 to I-5. Work started last month.

State 55 widening from Dyer Road to 17th Street under way.

I-5 widening from I-405 to I-605. Begins with reconstruction of the State 55 interchange and expanding the freeway segment from I-405 to State 55 in 1989.

Extension of State 55 to 19th St. Begins in February.