SANTA ANA : City Gets $1.8 Million for Traffic Projects

Three state transportation grants totaling $1.8 million have been awarded to the city for major traffic improvement projects, including one that would help relieve congestion caused by the San Diego-Costa Mesa freeway interchange.

The grants will also improve traffic signal timing and coordinate traffic flow on major streets leading from Santa Ana into surrounding cities, city officials announced.

Of the 39 projects funded statewide under the state Traffic System Management Program, 28 grants were awarded to Caltrans, City Traffic Engineer T.C. Sutaria said. In Orange County, Huntington Beach was the only other city to receive funding--$160,000 for a signal-coordination plan.

The grants were funded through gasoline-tax revenue generated by Proposition 111, which was approved by California voters in June, 1990.

The largest grant to Santa Ana, totaling $925,000, will be used to improve the city’s computer link with Caltrans’ communications system and control traffic along Harbor and MacArthur boulevards--two “super-streets” that are heavily traveled when traffic backs up near the San Diego-Costa Mesa freeway interchange.

Another grant of $801,300 will fund an upgrade of the central traffic control system and improve traffic-signal timing, Sutaria said. The third project, which received $125,000, will allow the city to synchronize traffic signals on major roads in Costa Mesa, Irvine, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove and Orange.

City officials said the projects will require the city to spend $105,000 on the system design and to expand the traffic signal control center in the city hall from 230 square feet to about 2,000 square feet.