Bridge at Featherly Park Is Finally Open for Business

Dear Street Smart: Why don’t they open up the bridge over the Santa Ana River at Featherly Park? The bridge appears to be complete and is needed to permit some degree of safety to the bottlenecked portion of the Riverside Freeway in event of some emergency.

I wonder if it’s remaining closed because neighbors across the river are worried about traffic flowing from the freeway through their neighborhood. But traffic could also flow out of the neighborhood to the freeway.

If they’re not going to use the bridge, why don’t they tear it down?

Charles Jameson

Corona

The new bridge, which helps connect Gypsum Canyon Road with La Palma Avenue in Yorba Linda on the north side of the river, opened about a week ago.

But your frustration over the delay is understandable. The bridge opening was put off several weeks because of electrical problems with a couple of signal lights on the road leading to the bridge from the freeway, according to Jerry Crabill, Yorba Linda’s traffic engineer. Officials opted to keep the bridge closed “for safety reasons” due to the balky signals even though the structure was raring and ready to have car traffic roll across, he said.

Crabill said the main reason for the bridge was not to provide relief to the freeway, but rather to allow residents of a neighborhood to the north of the river another access point to reach the Riverside Freeway.

Your point about the potential use of the bridge by commuters trying to skirt the freeway is well taken. It’s possible that during a crowded morning commute, traffic headed westbound on the Riverside Freeway might opt to get off at Gypsum Canyon Road and head out to La Palma Avenue, which snakes west well into the heart of Orange County.

If such a scenario takes place, it could introduce a new element of traffic into an otherwise quiet neighborhood that was previously just a collection of cul-de-sacs cut off to such incursions.

Dear Street Smart:

I often wonder why the Department of Motor Vehicles doesn’t allow all motorcycles to use the emergency lane (outside the yellow line on the left) for two-wheeled travel.

It would go a long way toward eliminating the dangers and occasionally serious accidents that result when motorcyclists split lanes between slow-moving traffic. Use of this space would involve no additional expense to the state or the driving public and provide an instant solution to the problem.

The motoring public may not realize that riding a motorcycle is far easier when it is moving, even slowly. When you stop a motorcycle, it wants to tip over. It is far safer for everyone if the motorcycle rider is allowed to keep rolling.

I wonder if there is some motorcycle-riding legislator who would get us some new law to use the emergency lane in stalled or slow-moving traffic.

Preston Welch

Seal Beach

Even if the entire California Legislature rode motorcycles, it’s pretty unlikely they would pass a law granting motorcyclists permission to use the emergency lane. After all, there would be no surer way to anger all those car-driving constituents barred from using the lane.

Transportation officials routinely cite a number of reasons for prohibiting motorcycles and other vehicles from using the emergency lanes as an escape hatch during traffic jams. It presents a safety hazard, they say, because stalled cars are often parked in the emergency strip or Highway Patrol officers are pausing there to monitor traffic. In such circumstances, motorcyclists could create a safety problem as they swing from the emergency lane into the regular traffic lanes.

It should be noted, however, that the use of the emergency lane during periods of peak congestion is not without precedent. Motorists for a time were allowed to use the emergency lane on the southbound Santa Ana Freeway out of downtown Los Angeles during the crowded afternoon commute.

But that rule wasn’t discriminatory: It was applied to both cars and motorcycles. Moreover, the emergency lane in that section of freeway no longer exists. Recognizing the need to expand the freeway in the spot, state highway officials converted it into a regular traffic lane.