FULLERTON : Residents Oppose Plan to Widen Road

A group of residents living along Bastanchury Road plan to ask the City Council tonight to rescind its decision to widen the road.

If the council refuses, the group will seek a special election next year to ask voters to halt the project, said John Bastian, a 16-year resident of Green Acre Drive, which backs up to Bastanchury.

“We intend right now to go ahead with an initiative,” Bastian said Monday. “And we may go ahead with litigation as well.”

The City Council approved widening a one-mile stretch of Bastanchury in 1985 and has been seeking the $3.7 million needed to build the road and buy strips of land from 18 property owners. If the project goes through, Bastanchury will be widened from four to six lanes between Euclid Street and Harbor Boulevard.

The group, which calls itself Save Our Bastanchury, asked the council in July to reconsider the project and to take another look at a study that measured traffic noise behind their homes. But the council voted to continue with its plans.

“One of the unique things Fullerton has going for it is the rural atmosphere, and (the current size of) Bastanchury adds to that,” said Mary Homme, a 28-year resident of Green Acre Drive. “The widening will detract from that.”

The project is unnecessary because the area is mostly residential, she said.

Studies show that as North County grows, 15,000 to 20,000 more cars and trucks will use Bastanchury each day, said Donald Hoppe, Fullerton’s project manager for the road-widening plan.

Even if Bastanchury remains a four-lane roadway, “the (additional) cars would eventually be there, based on projected improvements outside of the city and in the city itself,” he said.

More lanes are needed because rush-hour traffic is heavy on Bastanchury, Hoppe said. In the morning and late afternoon, cars back up several hundred feet from Harbor west to Laguna Road, he said.