A 5-Milestone in Easing Traffic Crunch : While It’s Not a Freeway, Jamboree Road Extension Is a Welcome Stretch of Relief

There was some good news recently for harried commuters tired of dodging other vehicles (and there was a report the other day of bouncing rubber balls that fell off a truck) on the congested Costa Mesa Freeway. City and county officials in Tustin celebrated the opening of a 5-mile extension of Jamboree Road, stretching from Irvine Boulevard in Tustin to Santiago Canyon Road in Orange.

Easing traffic on the area’s crowded roads will require a variety of solutions to give people alternatives to sitting in traffic. These include car pools, high-occupancy vehicle lanes, flexible working hours, buses and trains. But into the mix, it’s nice to know that there is a new stretch of road--not a freeway, but an extension of a sensible north-south artery.

The $30-million road extension will be especially useful once the road is also extended in the other direction. That is, through El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. That’s a current project that will greatly alleviate north-south traffic moving through Irvine by taking pressure off Culver and Jeffrey drives. Jamboree, an old wagon trail through the hills, eventually will run from Balboa Island in Newport Beach through the Marine base, and really provide commuter traffic with an alternative to modern freeway congestion.

At a recent breakfast ceremony, officials likened the opening of the new stretch of Jamboree Road to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. That was an understandable bit of poetic license at a ceremony that cheerfully emphasized transportation history by holding an antique car race. But a new Jamboree Road will be more than a reminder of the days of travel gone by. Easing up the pressure on the Costa Mesa Freeway is what the doctor ordered in 1990, and it will provide needed relief along heavily traveled major roads.