Where an Added Lane Might Hurt as Much as Help

Dear Street Smart:

I commute north on the San Diego Freeway (Interstate 405) from Fountain Valley to Long Beach in the morning. One area where traffic stalls is where the 405 and 22 (Garden Grove Freeway) come together headed northbound. In that direction, the 22 goes from three lanes to two lanes and the 405 stays the same. Why doesn’t Cal-

trans extend a lane on the right side so the 22 can stay three lanes to 7th Street (which dumps into Long Beach), or better yet all the way to the San Gabriel River Freeway? It would really help.

Michael Erickson

Fountain Valley

SS: This stretch of highway is a doozy. More than 300,000 vehicles each day use the San Diego Freeway north of the Garden Grove Freeway, making it the second most heavily traveled freeway in the world (the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles is No. 1).

All that traffic has conspired to make it tough to find a remedy for the bottlenecked transition lanes from the Garden Grove Freeway, according to officials with the California Department of Transportation.

While an extra lane off the 22 sounds like a great idea, Caltrans contends that it would probably create as many problems as it would solve.

For starters, noted Joe El-Harake, a Caltrans spokesman, cars using the added lane would be put in the precarious position of crossing three lanes of traffic in a little more than a mile to avoid being swept off the 405 at the Seal Beach Boulevard exit or the transition lanes onto the northbound San Gabriel River Freeway.

And traffic on the 405 would probably be slowed as these added cars jockeyed for position, he said.

In addition, extending the extra lane to the 7th Street exit or the San Gabriel River Freeway would prove formidable, requiring extensive reconstruction of

several entry and exit ramps at Seal Beach Boulevard, as well as widening the underpasses at bridges crossing the freeway, El-Harake said.

There is no money for such an ambitious undertaking by Caltrans, he said.

Barring any sudden windfall of cash to rebuild the highway bridges, which are barriers to more lanes, it would prove counterproductive to deliver more traffic to that very busy stretch of freeway, El-Harake said.

Instead, he said, it is far better to have the freeway begin to narrow well before the pinch point at the bridges.

Dear Street Smart:

This is regarding a letter from a resident of Cypress who didn’t like the street names in his neighborhood. I live on a street called Whippoorwill Avenue. Here are some problems I’ve encountered from living on this street:

* Every time I give out my address, I have to spell it. (That’s 12 letters.)

* It’s difficult to fit Whippoorwill into those tiny little spaces on return-address forms.

* When people hear it, they always have a comment, ranging from a simple “Wow!” to “What’s a whippoorwill?” (It’s a bird.)

Mary Harris

Fountain Valley

SS: Yes, it’s a bird. To be exact, it’s a grayish, insect-eating goatsucker (Caprimulgu vociferus) that frequents eastern North America, is related to the nightjar and, not surprisingly, is most active at night. Or so says Webster’s Second College Edition.

Perhaps the person who named the street in Fountain Valley was an ornithologist--or at least a big fan of birds. Certainly, they took their winged creatures a bit more seriously than the developer who named a short residential street in El Toro after a different sort of feathered friend. It’s called Big Bird Lane.

Dear Street Smart:

I’ve been driving the freeways and many major streets all over California, Nevada, Utah and part of Arizona for the past 25 years. For the past two months, I drove all over Orange County . . . and see nothing wrong with the freeways as they were built.

But junk those stupid HOV lanes. They are dangerous. Back during Medfly Jerry Brown’s term as governor he put them on the Castro Valley Freeway between Hayward and Livermore (near Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area), and they never worked. Since they removed the raised barrier, the freeway has been better than ever. Junk the idea.

Trucks on the freeway don’t bother me. I share the road with everyone and don’t argue with volume or velocity and have had no traffic citations in 25 years. The main problem I find is there’s too many people who follow other vehicles too close and in an emergency can’t stop in time.

I drive all freeways the last 25 years with my vehicle’s lights illuminated at all times. It works!

Ritz R. Miller

Burlingame

SS: Interesting to see the philosophical tug-of-war over car-pool lanes (a.k.a. High-Occupancy Vehicle, or HOV, lanes) in Orange County has spread all the way to the Bay Area city of Burlingame.

Although groups in Orange County such as Drivers for Highway Safety have pushed long and hard to eliminate car-pool lanes, Caltrans has continued to press ahead with plans for the restricted strips of asphalt along most major freeways in the region.

Aside from car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway, a long stretch was completed recently on the San Diego Freeway north of Costa Mesa. Car-pool lanes on that route south to El Toro are expected to be completed next year.

But the recent defeat of Measure M, which would have provided $3.1 billion for car-pool lanes and a variety of other transportation improvements in the county, is expected to slow the pace of construction of the lanes on other freeways.

While trucks do not bother our correspondent from Burlingame, the big rigs are a serious concern for many other motorists. Currently, the Orange County Transportation Commission is keeping a watchful eye on a commute-hour truck ban on Los Angeles County freeways. If it proves effective there, the ban could find a place on the political agenda in Orange County.

Tailgaters, of course, can be found everywhere, from the tangled streets of Manhattan to bucolic back-country lanes. We all do it, some more than others. But we shouldn’t. Fender-benders caused by staying too close to the guy in front are among the most common accidents on Southland freeways, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Unfortunately, the old axiom of maintaining a margin of one car length for every 10 m.p.h. on your speedometer hardly proves a cure in this part of the world. Back off the proper distance and a few other cars will swing in front of you.

Nonetheless, most of us could do a better job of lagging back a bit in case of an emergency. A front fender--or your life--is a terrible thing to waste.