Newport Officials Defend Highway Double Whammy

Dear Street Smart:

This is regarding what I perceive to be an inefficiency in the public works department of either the state of California or Orange County.

The entire strip along the Pacific Coast Highway between MacArthur Boulevard and Jamboree Road in Newport Beach was completely redone last year--a median strip was put in, extra lanes were added, curbs and gutters were installed.

Now this year they’re tearing up the entire link between MacArthur and Jamboree on the southbound lanes of this new street. That seems to me a complete waste of money. Someone in planning should have known if other work was needed and it should have been done at the time, or the improvements they made last year should have been delayed until this work was done.

Marshall Parker

Laguna Beach

Watching a busy section of Pacific Coast Highway get hit by jackhammers twice within a couple of years is indeed frustrating. But officials with the city of Newport Beach, which is coordinating the work, say there’s a ready explanation for the double whammy.

Under the new six-lane setup between MacArthur Boulevard and Jamboree Road, the southbound lanes run atop the old four-lane highway, while the northbound lanes are new strips of asphalt, according to John Wolter, cooperative projects engineer for the city. Some parts of the old pavement, being used for the southbound lanes, need to be dug up and replaced, while the whole stretch has to be ground down and resurfaced with fresh asphalt.

Unfortunately, Wolter said, there was not enough money to perform that rehabilitation work during the yearlong widening project, which was completed in March, 1988.

Officials went ahead with the widening instead of waiting until more money was available because they were anxious to get the job started, he said. Moreover, rehabilitation of the southbound lanes could not have coincided with the widening work because of a need for detour lanes, meaning the project simply would have been extended for several more months, Wolter said.

They opted to combine the rehabilitation with the work currently under way to widen the highway between Jamboree and Bayside Drive, he said. The entire project is expected to be completed in April.

Dear Street Smart:

This isn’t really a question about commuting but the effect of commuting on the surrounding neighborhoods.

In Measure M (the Nov. 7 ballot measure that proposes a half-cent sales tax hike to raise money for numerous transportation improvements) they talk about widening the Santa Ana Freeway (Interstate 5) from the current six lanes to 12 lanes. In Santa Ana where Interstate 5 crosses Main Street, that looks to be impossible without the destruction of half of the city located next to the freeway.

I’d like to know how the engineers plan to do that, through double-decking, widening or what?

Stephen J. Luko Jr.

Santa Ana

Recently, the state Department of Transportation did a cost estimate for double decking the Santa Ana Freeway between the Garden Grove and Riverside freeways. It found $150 million would be saved in right-of-way purchases, but the project’s price would jump by $340 million because of the added construction costs.

Moreover, a reassessment of such double-decker designs was sparked by the collapse of a section of Nimitz Freeway in Oakland. As a result, don’t expect to see a second deck along Interstate 5, authorities say.

Instead, what you’ll get is a wider freeway--a much wider freeway. From the El Toro Y in the south to the San Gabriel River Freeway in Los Angeles County, the Santa Ana Freeway will be expanded from six lanes to 12.

Near Main Street in Santa Ana, room will be made for the wider freeway mostly by spreading the pavement onto land now occupied by railroad tracks that are no longer in use, according to Barry Rabbitt, a Caltrans deputy director shepherding the project. But several homes in the area will be uprooted by the expansion.

The freeway expansion is under way on a section between the El Toro Y and the Costa Mesa Freeway. But work is not expected to begin in Santa Ana until at least 1991 and the entire project will not be completed until after the turn of the century.

Dear Street Smart: How amazing! This morning as I got onto the Costa Mesa Freeway going south from the McFadden Avenue on-ramp, I was amazed at the progress made since last week. The barriers were down, the lane lines in, the ease of getting on certainly less traumatic and the traffic flowed smoothly. As work has progressed, I have noted increased traffic flow and fewer tie-ups.

At 7:30 this morning I was ready to write a letter commending Caltrans for a job well done--I still feel that way--but what a surprise to read your column today and hear the heated and vehement agreement about how awful the Costa Mesa Freeway is.

I think Caltrans has had a monumental job and is succeeding very nicely. It’s great to see and feel the progress.

Joyce Eriksen

Santa Ana

Much like beauty, a good freeway seems to be in the eye of the beholder. During our recent reader poll to select the most loathsome freeway in Orange County, the Costa Mesa Freeway was the outright winner. Or loser. However you want to look at it. Joyce Eriksen’s letter was in a distinct minority. Far more were like the following missive.

Dear Street Smart: I agree the Costa Mesa Freeway is our worst freeway. One of the main reasons is the car-pool lane. Every car entering the car-pool lane must cross all other lanes of traffic before entering and after leaving the lane. Let’s throw open the lane to utilize what is already built.

Put me down as a reader who feels the real solution is in improving the existing highways and opening up the car-pool lanes to general-use traffic. It will probably also require a complete reorganization of the Orange County Transit District, which has contributed greatly to the mess we are in today.

Carl E. Schy

Yorba Linda

The much-maligned car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway are often targeted by commuters for ridicule. But there are those who feel car-pool lanes and mass-transit need to be emphasized in Orange County. Consider the next letter.

Dear Street Smart: I loathe all the freeways in Orange County equally. My feeling is that half the lanes on all of them should be dedicated to high-occupancy vehicles. I don’t believe we should be adding new lanes for single-passenger vehicles.

There are some new freeways which are supposedly going to be busways. That remains to be seen. But I really think that half of all freeways should be dedicated to high-occupancy vehicles and we should not be encouraging single-passenger driving.

Mark Hayes

Corona del Mar

Love them or hate them, car-pool lanes seem destined to be a fixture on Orange County freeways. Current plans call for adding car-pool lanes to almost every freeway in the county that doesn’t already have them.

But it appears that Caltrans will fall far short of your goals. These days, the agency permits a new car-pool lane only if it augments--but doesn’t replace--an existing mixed-use lane. The only freeway being eyed for multiple car-pool lanes is the Riverside Freeway, where plans call for a pair of the reserved lanes heading in each direction.

As for busways, there is one planned as part of the Santa Ana Freeway expansion. This transit way, which will be open to both car pools and buses, is being designed to run down the center of the freeway from the Costa Mesa Freeway in the south to Katella Avenue in the north. It will be set off by barriers from the other lanes and feature its own on- and off-ramps.

A clarification: Due to inaccurate information, we printed an error in last week’s column. A California Highway Patrol spokeswoman told us that motorcyclists risk getting a ticket if they dash between rows of cars on the freeway during rush-hour 10 m.p.h. faster than the flow of traffic.

A reader called to tell us he knew of no such 10 m.p.h. limit in the California Vehicle Code for “lane-splitting.” He was right.

Lt. Ron Phulps of the CHP’s Santa Ana office said the safe speed for lane splitting is a “gray area” subject to interpretation by a CHP officer and a judge. Lane-splitters are liable to get a ticket only when an officer deems they are going too fast for the conditions.

“It’s a judgment call for the officer,” Phulps said. “It’s the same as getting a citation for driving too fast in the fog. Under some conditions, it may be unsafe to split lanes at even 5 m.p.h. faster than traffic.”