Residents Calmly Assess Upheaval in Freeway Expansion

Ruth Medrano will lose her Anaheim home of 30 years when the Santa Ana Freeway behind her house is widened within the next four years. But, she said, giving up her home and selling her property to the state to make way for the project is all part of Orange County’s growth.

“This is progress. If the freeways have to be widened, they have to be widened,” Medrano said Thursday. “It’s like a bridge. You have to build one to get across water.

“I have seen many, many changes. If we have to move, we have to move, that’s all there is to it.”

Medrano is one of an estimated 831 people in 396 residential units who will have to move to allow the widening of the six-lane Santa Ana Freeway from the interchange of the Riverside Freeway in Anaheim to the interchange of the Garden Grove Freeway in Santa Ana.

Also, 214 businesses employing 4,333 people will have to relocate, and parking spots for 5,000 cars will be lost when that leg of Orange County’s most heavily traveled freeway corridor gets a face-lift beginning in 1993.

It is the third phase of Caltrans’ $1.85-billion project to widen the freeway from the El Toro “Y” on the south to the San Gabriel River Freeway in Santa Fe Springs on the north to handle projected traffic increases through 2010.

Freeway neighbors got a peek at the project during a jammed public hearing Wednesday night at Anaheim City Hall, where worried residents traced the path of the expansion on maps as officials of the California Department of Transportation stood by to answer questions.

“There are people who recognize that freeways need widening and are willing to move,” said Ron Kosinski, Caltrans engineering chief on the project. “You’d anticipate a volatile exhibition (of affected residents), but we haven’t had that.”

Instead, many residents who would be displaced by this third phase of the massive freeway-widening project said they saw the necessity of upgrading the freeway.

“I dread the prospect of having to move,” said Sherman Remais of Anaheim, who has lived near the freeway for 34 years. “But it’s best for the community.”

To ease congestion on the 8.1-mile stretch of freeway, which was designed to handle 115,000 vehicles a day but now carries 160,000, Caltrans wants to widen it from six lanes to 12 at a cost of more than $500 million. The expansion would give the freeway a capacity of 230,000 vehicles a day. It would also cut down on pollution as less traffic comes to a halt during rush hour, according to the agency’s environmental impact report.

Construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 1993--and be completed in six years--if Orange County voters approve a half-cent sales tax for transportation on the Nov. 7 ballot and state voters pass an increase in the gasoline tax next June.

The cheapest alternative that has been considered would be to add one freeway lane in each direction, displacing only five homes and four businesses, according to Caltrans. If the two lanes were to be regular traffic lanes, they would cost a total of $50 million. If they were built as car-pool lanes, the cost would be $58 million. But that option would only increase capacity to 30,000 more cars a day--far below current traffic levels and predicted growth levels through the turn of the century.

Caltrans and the Orange County Transportation Commission support the more expensive option of adding three lanes in each direction, doubling the capacity to 230,000 cars a day at a cost ranging from an estimated $509.3 million to $574.9 million.

The added six lanes could be used as a mix of regular, car-pool and limited-access lanes for buses and car pools, as well as transition lanes from freeway interchanges.

The Santa Ana Freeway through Orange County was built as four lanes in 1956 and widened to six lanes in 1964 as the area grew. It was intended to have a 20-year life span. Today, heavy traffic on the stretch routinely comes to a standstill during both morning and evening rush hours because of the sheer volume of traffic.

The public has until Sept. 20 to comment on the alternatives for this third phase of the widening project before Caltrans reviews input and seeks construction approval from the Federal Highway Administration by May. The widening of the freeway through the cities of Buena Park, Fullerton, Anaheim, Orange and Santa Ana is scheduled to occur in five stages, beginning with the Garden Grove Freeway interchange to just north of the Anaheim Boulevard exit.

Two buildings that have been designated as historic structures initially stood in the way of the project: the Melrose Abbey Mausoleum on Manchester Avenue in Anaheim and Southern California Edison Co.’s Anaheim substation. Under revised plans, the added lanes would bypass the mausoleum, Kosinski said, and the substation would either be destroyed or moved.

Relocating residents and businesses would take more than a year, Caltrans officials told residents at the forum. State agents would appraise the property before the state begins buying.

Under the Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1970, homeowners and business owners would be reimbursed for moving costs, residents were told. Renters would receive moving costs and payments for any increase in their rent, at least initially.

“The displacement issue, of course, poses a special hardship for low-income families and the elderly,” Kosinski said.

Reaction to the project at the hearing was mixed. About the same number of people spoke in favor of the proposal as against it.

“A significant improvement must be made if we want to continue the economic vitality of Orange County expected by our constituents,” said Joanne Coontz, a councilwoman for the city of Orange and chairwoman of her city’s transportation planning committee. “Anything less will not achieve the purpose we are after.”

George Demett of Fullerton said after the forum that the money would be better used for monorails or commuter trains.

“I’m not saying we go back to the horse-and-buggy days,” he said. “But if you build more and more cars, you’re going to have more problems. Why not invest the money for trains to get the cars off the road?”

Other homeowners said that, even if 12 new lanes are built, the project would be obsolete by the turn of the century.

“The more we build, the more the influx of population,” said Jim Walker of Anaheim. “It’s about time we sit down and look at alternative transportation. We’re spending millions and millions of dollars for a few cars here and there. I feel we’re getting ripped off by our own system.”

Carol Wheeler, owner of two commercial buildings of 70,000 square feet each that are in the path of freeway expansion, said that while she would like to stay put, she is resigned to the fact that the freeway project will go forward.

“I have learned the hard way that what they want to do, they will do,” Wheeler said. “None of these proposals is going to work, if it’s 20 lanes or 25. They’re already behind the time.”