Big Day Draws Near for I-5 : Commuting: Drivers will reap first benefits of widening project that started in 1987 when six-mile stretch doubles from six lanes to 12.

For five years, motorists have braved lane closures and mazelike detours on the Santa Ana Freeway like river rafters navigating white-water rapids.

Now these seasoned commuters are about to reap the first reward of the massive freeway widening project that has disrupted traffic to varying degrees since 1987. California Department of Transportation officials are to open a six-mile stretch of asphalt this week (the precise day hasn’t been selected) between Red Hill Avenue and the junction with the San Diego Freeway. The six-lane Santa Ana Freeway suddenly will double to 12 lanes, with a new car-pool lane in each direction and so-called auxiliary, merge lanes.

Soon after, Caltrans expects to open the county’s first so-called drop ramps, at Barranca Parkway, which will funnel traffic from a street overpass directly into the car-pool lanes in the freeway median. No longer will car-poolers have to cut across several lanes of traffic to get into the commuter lanes.

“I’ve been waiting for this. It seems like forever,” said Gretchen Saunders, who works in Tustin. “It’s been so frustrating to see them finish paving the new section months ago and not be able to use it.”

The $1.6-billion project involves doubling the Santa Ana Freeway’s width from three lanes to six lanes in each direction in most places, constructing a towering transit way for buses and car-pools over the Costa Mesa Freeway interchange, reconstructing nearly every bridge and moving thousands of residents and businesses--all without closing any freeway during the day.

“What we’re doing is essentially unique in the state,” said Brent Felker, Caltrans’ deputy director of construction in Orange County. “It’s like conducting open-heart surgery while keeping the patient walking or running.”

There was never any question that the freeways would remain open during the construction; a freeway-dependent public would have it no other way. But it takes painstaking, detailed planning to pour tons of concrete and re-stripe lanes while cars fly by.

For example, it took months to devise a way to rebuild the Orange Crush--the interchange of the Santa Ana (Interstate 5), Garden Grove (California 22) and Orange (California 57) freeways--without shutting down the Garden Grove Freeway completely. Finally, highway engineers decided that a temporary bridge would have to be built to carry Garden Grove Freeway traffic over the Santa Ana Freeway, only to be torn down later. Construction on the temporary bridge began recently.

Commuters need to stay sharp to keep up with the ever-changing detours. When transitions from the Garden Grove Freeway to the Santa Ana Freeway were shut down, commuters were put on circuitous paths through city streets. When residents in one neighborhood objected to the extra vehicles pouring through, Caltrans rerouted motorists again. And when 1st Street and 4th Street bridges were first closed as part of the widening project, unwary motorists could be seen turning into the dead ends, shaking their heads and sometimes cursing in frustration.

The section of Santa Ana Freeway south of Red Hill Avenue was the easiest to keep open, Caltrans officials said, because there were no major structures to move and there was basically one landowner to deal with--the Irvine Co. Moreover, there was enough room to pave new lanes next to the old lanes, and then divert traffic onto the new pavement while the old lanes were closed for repaving and re-striping.

North of the Santa Ana/Costa Mesa Freeway interchange, however, crews must rebuild a freeway in the county’s densely populated urban core, where hundreds of existing structures have to be demolished. The right of way is mostly cleared now, and construction work has just begun.

“You’re laying a new freeway next to an old one, in a space so tight that getting construction equipment in there is nearly impossible,” said Joe El-Harake, Caltrans operations director. “There’s very little room to maneuver.”

Moving north, reconstruction now underway on the Orange Crush is so massive and complex that computers haven’t been able to track all of the individual tasks. Computer printouts would be blocks long if they listed every chore to be performed at the spot where three freeways converge.

“It’s basically up to the major contractors to figure out how to comply with our specs,” said Tim Buchanan, who oversees the Orange Crush portion of the I-5 project. “It’s up to them to make sure that the material and workers both arrive on site when they’re supposed to.”

North of the Orange Crush, Caltrans is purchasing right of way, but no construction has started.

The biggest headache of the entire project, Caltrans officials said, is keeping hundreds of individual contractors and subcontractors out of each other’s way. The second biggest problem is the lack of alternate, parallel routes because the freeway slices diagonally across the county’s grid pattern of major streets.

Remarkably, Caltrans’ Felker said, the I-5 project is not scaring drivers off the freeways, as occasionally occurs during major accidents or tie-ups. Traffic volume on the Santa Ana Freeway, said Caltrans officials, is the same now as it was before construction began--about 250,000 to 300,000 vehicles per day.

And that, said Caltrans’ Barry Rabbitt, is the whole idea.

“Traffic was not as bad as I expected it to be during construction,” said Carol Raskin, who commutes to work at a preschool near Red Hill. “I didn’t see that much difference compared to before. I just hope the new lanes won’t be overwhelmed the moment they open.”

While there have been some disruptions, especially at night or when weekend ramp closures were announced too late to adequately warn motorists, Caltrans officials credit several factors for their ability to keep traffic moving:

- Construction work is phased. Work has been progressing northward from the junction of the Santa Ana and San Diego (I-405) freeways--the El Toro Y--in segments, each with its own Caltrans management team and contractor. This helps minimize disruptions and confusion along the rest of the freeway.

- A new system in which tow trucks rove the freeway removing stalled or damaged vehicles quickly.

- An extensive public outreach program modeled after the effort made in Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympics. It includes direct mail to affected neighborhoods telling of ramp and street closures and maps showing detours. This is supplemented with radio announcements, hand-delivered flyers, and changeable electronic message signs out on the roads. A private public relations firm was hired to supplement the existing Caltrans public information staff.

“The detours worked well,” said Bob Ledendecker, Tustin’s public works director. “Motorists are pretty savvy, and that’s helped a lot too. . . . They know how to get around.”

Not all the work has gone smoothly.

Due to the state’s budget stalemate this summer, Caltrans did not have enough money to award contracts for removal of some toxic waste sites along I-5 north of the Orange Crush. The agency’s permits ran out and must be sought again.

Some right-of-way decisions were delayed when some Anaheim residents claimed that an electrical substation in the freeway’s path is a historical landmark.

In a few instances, such as the infamous case involving the Liberty Mutual office building in Santa Ana, cities allowed developers to build in the freeway’s path due to miscommunication with Caltrans about the widened freeway’s planned alignment. The buildings had to be purchased and demolished at great expense.