Millions in Transportation Improvements Needed for Disneyland Resort : Traffic: Car-pooling, off-hour travel, mass transit are key to doubling of park visitors.

Millions of dollars in transportation improvements will be needed to accommodate millions of new visitors drawn to the Disneyland Resort.

Heavy doses of car-pooling, extensive use of off-hour travel and mass transit are key to the findings of a draft environmental impact report, which says a doubling of the current 12 million visitors to Disneyland will have minimal long-term adverse effects.

The report concedes that the traffic impacts cannot be sufficiently managed to meet air quality regulations. As a result, Disney will be forced to buy pollution credits on the open market, Disney attorney George J. Mihlsten said. Disney officials said they don’t know how much it will cost to buy the credits, which are part of a recently adopted, controversial strategy to control air pollution.

One of the keys to the optimism about long-term traffic impacts is the report’s conclusion that many of the transportation improvements are needed simply to handle anticipated regional growth, regardless of Disney’s plans.

Other major findings:

* Even with millions of dollars in improvements to freeways, sections of the Santa Ana, Orange and Garden Grove freeways will experience severe stop-and-go driving during rush hours.

Still, the environmental report--overseen by Santa Ana-based Michael Brandman Associates with input from several traffic engineering firms--describes the congestion on the freeways as “acceptable.”

Caltrans’ Walt Hagen, who cautioned that he has not seen the report, said Thursday: “We’ve got problems out there now in terms of congestion, that (project) would tend to make it worse . . . how much remains to be seen.”

* To deal with the traffic and pollution, the project would include parking cars at the staggering rate of one per second in two of the world’s largest parking garages, using a system of ramps that would take cars selectively to individual parking floors where attendants would guide visitors into specific spaces. Another series of ramps would be used for exiting the garages. This results in less idling time, according to the report, thus reducing air pollution.

* The total number of so-called daily person trips arriving at the Disneyland Resort will increase from 75,685 recorded in 1990, to 157,095 in 2000, and 184,405 in 2010.

* Traffic congestion will worsen considerably at the intersection of Ball Road and Anaheim Boulevard pending completion of the Santa Ana Freeway widening project and related improvements, including a grade separation at that intersection. The environmental studies don’t assume completion of the I-5 project until 2010.

* Traffic will worsen during construction, requiring the company and the city to develop specific routes for construction equipment, with such equipment banned from residential streets. All businesses in the area will remain accessible, even during road construction, according to the environmental report. Even after construction is completed, truck traffic to the Disneyland Resort will be restricted to off-peak hours.

* To reduce employee travel, on-site child care will be provided the 28,000 workers, and employees would have to raise their average vehicle occupancy from the current 1.14 people to 1.5.

* Low-emission paints and coatings plus extensive use of electrically powered vehicles and other equipment will be employed to cut air pollution. “We can get the (pollution) numbers down,” said Disney’s Mihlsten, “but we can’t get them down below (the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s) thresholds.”

Other features counted on to reduce traffic and air pollution are an expansion of the existing Disneyland Monorail system to link new facilities with the old, but only on Disney property. There would be no extension of the system to the Anaheim Convention Center or hotels along Harbor Boulevard.

Car-pool ramps would deliver vehicles directly from the car-pool lanes on the Santa Ana Freeway to the project’s parking garages on Freedman Way and at West Street.

Congress recently appropriated $14.2 million in federal highway demonstration project funds for these ramps despite a controversy over the use of tax money to serve a private entertainment complex. Caltrans’ Hagen said his agency is counting on local governments or Disney to come up with the rest of the money needed to construct the ramps. No amount has been specified.

Also, the planned nine-city elevated urban rail system now being studied by the Orange County Transportation Authority would possibly connect to the Disneyland Resort by a moving sidewalk from a point east of the Santa Ana Freeway, thus avoiding the expense of a new rail crossing over the Santa Ana Freeway.

There would also be a second moving sidewalk to convey people from the parking garages to the resort’s front gate off Harbor Boulevard. Also, large numbers of shuttle buses would be used between hotels and transit stations and the resort.

A key element of the project’s land-use plan would divert some traffic from residential streets. Disney plans to realign Cerritos Avenue so that it cannot be used for through traffic.

By the year 2000, according to the report, 56% of all the people arriving at the resort, including employees, are expected to car-pool. Currently, Disneyland has an average vehicle occupancy rate of 3.9 people.