Relief in Sight for Dead Zone at El Toro ‘Y’ : Freeways: The schedule has been stepped up, but improvements won’t start for at least another two years.

It begins each weekday at about dawn. A churning horde of cars, vans, pickups and delivery trucks gathers and grows, rolling up the spine of southern Orange County toward the inevitable--a traffic jam at the knot of pavement called the El Toro “Y.”

In the evening, it happens again. The multitudes headed south on the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways meet and mix at the “Y,” backing up traffic on either highway for upward of a mile. Too many logs in the chute.

The problem has been around for better than a decade, growing worse with each passing month as more and more homes sprout in Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel and other bedroom communities of South County. Relief--a new lane or two, a wider overpass, anything--has never materialized, even as other highway construction projects roared along in the North County.

But now the south may be getting its due. Thanks to money from Measure M, the special transportation tax approved by voters in November, an ambitious plan is moving forward to spend more than $275 million to rebuild the confluence of the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways and lay down car-pool lanes along a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 5 to San Clemente.

“There is a lot of development occurring down that way, and more is planned,” said Barry Rabbit, the California Transportation Department official shepherding the Interstate 5 project. “The combination of the confluence plus those (car-pool) lanes will contribute to help relieve congestion.”

Already, a staggering total of more than 300,000 vehicles pour through the El Toro Y each day. That’s more cars than there are in the cities of Santa Ana and Anaheim combined. By the year 2010, the number of vehicles using the confluence should be upward of 400,000 a day, officials say.

Unfortunately, work on the El Toro Y won’t start for at least another two years and will not be completed until mid-1997 at the earliest.

To meet even that far-away deadline, transportation officials say they’ve squeezed the schedule as tight as they can. Highway jobs, after all, don’t happen overnight. Said Rabbit: “It’s the best that can be done. There’s no hurrying it any more than that.”

The first phase of the project--a swath of car-pool lanes through San Juan Capistrano--won’t be completed until mid-1996. But the short stretch of new pavement would still rank as one of the first highway jobs in the county completed with Measure M money.

That’s good news for South County lawmakers, who gripe that their region has often been overlooked when it comes to getting help for freeway gridlock.

“There is life south of the El Toro Y,” San Juan Capistrano Councilman Gary L. Hausdorfer declared recently. “Don’t get me wrong. The northern and central sections of the county are important. But the South County has experienced most of the growth in recent years, and it’s all served right now by one freeway--the I-5. People need to remember that.”

All too often they have seemed to forget. During the recent Measure M campaign, for instance, the proposed car-pool lanes on I-5 from San Clemente to the El Toro Y were relegated to a relatively low spot on the pecking order of projects, with construction expected to begin late in the decade.

But in recent months the starting date for the commuter lanes was bumped forward several years, to early 1994. Officials say the stepped-up schedule came primarily because the car-pool lanes will be relatively easy to build, with plenty of room to lay down pavement in the center median along most of the route.

They also say it makes sense to finish the car-pool lanes close to the completion dates of the tangled braid of ramps and overpasses that will make up the new El Toro Y.

“Completion of the car-pool lanes is an integral part of making the (I-405/5) interchange work,” noted Mark Goodman, executive assistant to County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district stretches across South County. “You can do as much as you want to improve the confluence, but if traffic to the south still backs up because there aren’t enough lanes, that interchange isn’t going to be effective.”

Before any of the improvements can become a reality, however, Orange County officials will need to overcome challenges to Measure M.

The half-cent transportation tax, which is expected to raise $3.1 billion for road and transit projects during the next 20 years, is subject to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of Measure M foes, including the Libertarian Party of Orange County. Although local transportation officials have prevailed so far in court, opponents say they plan to fight to the end.

If that’s the case, the ongoing litigation could threaten to undermine efforts by transportation officials to sell bonds that would finance projects such as the confluence and car-pool lanes.

As the lawyers battle on, transportation officials are making sure they cross their T’s in preparation for the big day when work actually begins.

On Monday, the Orange County Local Transportation Authority is scheduled to consider retaining ICF Kaiser Engineers of Irvine to oversee management of the confluence project. So far, the project has been a cooperative effort by county transportation officials, Caltrans, the city of Irvine and the Irvine Co., which owns property in the confluence and stands to gain vastly improved traffic access to its Spectrum office and commercial development straddling the freeway.

The Transportation Authority will also hear a report on the status of the project and its costs, which have escalated from original estimates put forth during the Measure M campaign last fall.

As part of Measure M, only $55 million was allocated for the El Toro “Y” project and another $80 million was spotlighted for the car-pool lanes. Today, transportation officials estimate that the car-pool lanes will cost $85 million and the confluence a soaring $165.7 million.

Lisa Mills, the Transportation Authority’s planning manager, said the inflated costs stem from design changes in the project--such as the added costs for the car-pool lanes--and the fact that right-of-way costs weren’t included in estimates for Measure M.

In addition, the original price tag put on projects was based on estimates made in 1988, when Measure M first surfaced. To update the figures incorporated in the ballot measure would have required returning to each city in the county to seek approval for the change, Mills said. Instead, officials decided to forgo that task and stick with the plan’s original estimates for projects.

As a practical matter, authorities will compensate for any shortfall with funds culled from other Measure M projects, which authorities expect will yield substantial savings, Mills said.

While the tangled effort to fund the South County work may seem like a tale from the Byzantine Empire, the task of sorting out the traffic troubles at the El Toro “Y” is every bit as elaborate. A variety of factors conspire to cause the daily bottleneck.

Southbound, it’s fairly simple. Traffic on the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways is forced to eventually funnel into half as many lanes when the two highways merge. Amid that mess, cars on the Santa Ana Freeway must cross several lanes of traffic to reach off-ramps, while I-5 trucks are forced to weave into the slow lanes because the state vehicle code requires big rigs to keep right.

The northbound stretch, however, seems an unlikely spot for freeway snarl. After all, the four lanes on Interstate 5 feed traffic to two separate freeways boasting double the number of lanes.

Problems begin to crop up when motorists change lanes to reach one of the two interstates.

Trucks relegated to the right-hand lanes must weave to the left to continue north on the Santa Ana Freeway, vying with speeding cars the whole way. Vehicles humming along in the fast lane of I-5 are forced to cut across three lanes of traffic to reach the overpass leading to the San Diego Freeway.

Meanwhile, motorists zipping onto the freeway from Lake Forest Drive a mile south of the confluence have to quickly pick their way across churning traffic to reach the left-hand lanes siphoning onto the Santa Ana Freeway.

All that activity causes the motorists to begin tapping on their brakes. Like a row of dominoes, they hit their brake pedals, one after another. The traffic slows and slows. Sometimes, it stops.

And the daily grind at the “Y” begins.

To cure the troubled interchange, transportation officials have proposed a slate of changes. Among the highlights:

* For trucks headed north on Interstate 5, a bypass road running parallel with the freeway would funnel around the confluence before reuniting them with the highway farther north. This would allow the lumbering big rigs to avoid the complicated lane changes that slow up traffic.

* Motorists headed north on either freeway from Lake Forest Drive or a new overpass planned as part of the extension of Bake Parkway would also use the bypass road, keeping that hefty volume of vehicles out of the confluence.

* A southbound bypass would sift trucks from the Santa Ana Freeway and shuttle them onto an elevated road around the Y, ultimately funneling them back onto Interstate 5 to the south.

* The bypass road also would be used by southbound cars exiting at Bake Parkway or Lake Forest Drive. These automobiles would be freed of the task of weaving across traffic merging from the San Diego Freeway.

* A special flyover overpass would link car-pool lanes on Interstate 5 with the San Diego Freeway. The overpass would permit northbound car-poolers to avoid cutting across several lanes of traffic to reach the regular traffic ramps leading to the San Diego Freeway.

* South of the confluence, double car-pool lanes would run in each direction to Alicia Parkway. A single commuter lane in each direction would stretch from Alicia Parkway to Coast Highway at the northern edge of San Clemente.

“The combination of all those improvements should lead to smoother flow with less restrictions due to the weaving traffic,” said Rabbit of Caltrans. “It’s good. It’s really a good improvement.”

When the extra ramps and overpasses and bypass roads are all in place, traffic that now crawls during most commute hours should speed up to between 45 m.p.h. and 55 m.p.h., Caltrans officials say.

But the improvements won’t last long, they say, if other road improvements and the trio of tollways planned for South County aren’t built.

With the tollways and widening work along streets lacing the south, the I-5 upgrades should help relieve traffic congestion for decades, Rabbit said. Without them, congestion could return “after 10 or 15 years,” he said.

“It will help,” agreed Stanley T. Oftelie, the transportation agency’s executive director. “Will it solve all the transportation problems in South County? No, but it will help. Super-streets and tollways will also help. I don’t think there’s a single project that will solve all of South County’s transportation problems.”