SANTA ANA, TUSTIN : Caltrans Braces for Bridge Demolition

In a move expected to snarl traffic in Santa Ana and Tustin, a pair of bridges will be demolished in late spring to make way for a widening of the Costa Mesa and Santa Ana freeways, state Transportation Department officials announced Wednesday.

The two 4th Street bridges crossing the freeways will be removed by June and wider overpasses will be erected, a process that should take more than a year, Caltrans officials said.

Joe Hecker, Caltrans traffic management chief in Orange County, said the “traffic impacts will be large.” Much of the traffic will be funneled onto 1st Street, where bridges over the two freeways are slated to be demolished and rebuilt as soon as the 4th Street work is completed.

Hecker said that brochures will be sent to 100,000 nearby residents outlining the project and that a second radio transmitter will be installed to offer information to freeway drivers about traffic delays caused by the work.

Most importantly, Hecker said, efforts have been made to improve alternative surface streets and upgrade traffic signals to accommodate automobiles diverted by the construction project.

Aside from rebuilding the bridges, Caltrans has secured funding to widen the eight-lane Costa Mesa Freeway to 12 lanes between the Santa Ana Freeway and 17th Street, officials said.

The bridge work is just the start of an effort to rebuild nearly every overpass along the Santa Ana Freeway to allow its widening to 10 general-use lanes, two car-pool lanes and an elevated thoroughfare for buses and car pools.

But state transportation officials said much of that work will be delayed indefinitely unless new funding sources are available, in particular the gas-tax increase on the state ballot in June.

Among the projects in jeopardy is the rebuilding of the tightly knotted interchange of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways. If the gas-tax measure is approved by state voters, the interchange reconstruction is expected to begin in August, 1991 and be concluded in early 1996, Caltrans officials said.

Keith McKean, Orange County district director, said much of the department’s budget and attention has been shifted of late to retrofitting bridges up and down the state since the 7.1-magnitude earthquake in the Bay Area last October.