Countywide : Santa Ana Freeway Widening in Doubt

In an otherwise upbeat assessment of efforts to ease traffic congestion in Orange County, the state’s top local highway official said Thursday that the high cost of earthquake-safety work on California’s freeways could delay or potentially jeopardize widening of the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim.

Russell Lightcap, Caltrans district director in Orange County, also suggested that construction of private toll lanes on the traffic-choked Riverside Freeway might be delayed until at least next year.

But he declared that “commitments” made by the agency to improve the county’s snarled freeway network “are being fulfilled,” with more than $4.4-billion in federal, state, local and private monies slated to be spent on highway projects during the next seven years.

As proof, he pointed during an hourlong press conference at the County Hall of Administration to a plethora of projects just completed, under construction or scheduled to soon start. Among them:

* Work began this month on a pair of car-pool lanes on the Orange Freeway. Car-pool lanes also are planned on Interstate 5 in South County between Coast Highway and the El Toro Y, with construction expected to start in 1994.

* Construction is expected to start this summer to upgrade the knot of overpasses known as the “Orange Crush,” the confluence of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways. Work also is expected to soon begin on a new elevated “transit way” linking planned car-pool lanes on the Santa Ana Freeway with those on the Costa Mesa Freeway.

* A new, 2-mile segment of the Costa Mesa Freeway extending the highway farther toward the coast will be opened Tuesday, with a second phase expected to be completed next year.

* Work continues on the massive effort to widen the six-lane Santa Ana Freeway to 12 lanes between the El Toro Y and the Garden Grove Freeway.

Amid those developments, Lightcap noted that the high cost of earthquake-retrofitting work on the state’s freeway network threatens to erode funding for a variety of other highway projects, including those in Orange County.

Legislators are studying a 2-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase to finance the earthquake-safety program. If the hike isn’t enacted, officials contend, many projects promised voters when they approved a gasoline tax increase last year would be delayed or canceled.

In Orange County, the greatest concern would be financing Santa Ana Freeway widening work between the Garden Grove and Riverside freeways in Anaheim, Lightcap said. Although money has already been allotted for construction work along other stretches of the freeway, funds for the Anaheim segment have not yet been approved.

Meanwhile, plans for a private consortium to begin work this year on toll lanes along the Riverside Freeway will probably be put off until 1992, Lightcap said. The project has been slowed in part because of uncertainty created by legislation sponsored by Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward). The Lockyer bill, which still must pass muster in the Legislature, would effectively scuttle the project by limiting any sort of public assistance.