Coasting to the Shore Gets a Little Easier : * Extension of the Costa Mesa Freeway Opens 6 Months Early and Within Budget

Summer in the Newport Harbor area ought to be a bit more tolerable this year, if for no other reason than it should be easier to get to the county’s coastal doorstep. That’s because of the opening of the $38-million extension of the Costa Mesa Freeway to 19th Street into downtown Costa Mesa.

The two-mile stretch of new freeway was completed officially Wednesday when the northbound lanes were opened. Southbound lanes opened the week before, just in time for the season’s influx of cars from all over the region heading for the harbor area and its beaches and recreational playgrounds.

Drivers who began using the freeway as soon as the barriers were removed reported no bottlenecks. Its first big test, though, will be this holiday weekend, and then subsequent summer Saturdays and Sundays when cars traditionally jam the route from the San Diego Freeway to the seashore. Caltrans officials are optimistic that the new lanes will help ease the congestion. And they’re deservedly happy about completing the project six months early and within budget, even though some Costa Mesa residents and merchants think it was almost 20 years late.

Work on the freeway actually began back in the mid-1970s. But state money then as now was in short supply, and when construction funds dried up the work was abandoned, leaving behind a swath of dirt and weeds between the existing Newport Boulevard traffic lanes that came to be known as “the ditch.” Construction resumed about three years ago.

The new lanes fall short of the route’s original goal--which was to end at West Coast Highway and link that heavily traveled road (once also earmarked to be a freeway) to the San Diego Freeway. But there wasn’t enough money or support to carry the new lanes that far. There still isn’t.

The extension to 19th Street, however, and the end of years of delay, detours and construction, should ease traffic woes for local residents and business firms in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, and, we hope, for all motorists looking for that easier path to the county’s coastline.