Freeway Neighbors Decry Work Delay

Residents near the “Orange Crush”--the interchange of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways--are angry about a year’s delay in reconstructing a key connector ramp across the street from their homes.

The ramp, part of a $71-million remodeling project, connects the eastbound Garden Grove Freeway to the southbound Santa Ana Freeway. Closed in November, 1991, it was supposed to reopen by this year’s end.

Not any more: Caltrans officials said Monday that the ramp will remain closed for another year--a 100% error from the original time estimate.

Charles Maloney, whose home fronts the construction site on Fallbrook Drive, is angry about the delay.

Maloney isn’t just any complainer--he’s a retired executive officer of the Automobile Club of Southern California, one of the state’s most influential advocacy groups for motorists.

Maloney said the problem isn’t so much the inability to use the ramps as it is construction noise and dust, which due to prevailing winds blows into his house.

“I have no problem with the ramps, because I know the detours,” Maloney said Monday. “But I live straight across the street from where they’re changing the interchange. I’m retired, so we can come and go as we please, but it’s the pile drivers. . . . We had the noise incessantly for a week. Dishes would rattle, little things would fall over.”

At one point, a construction supervisor told him that the pile driving would last only another two weeks, Maloney said, but it went on for two months.

“I just want to be able to plan my life,” Maloney said. “If Caltrans would only do what they say.”

Steve Saville, a Caltrans spokesman, said Monday that a contractor has encountered problems while trying to drive new bridge supports into the ground at the ramp location, but he was at a loss to explain how that would push a project a year behind schedule.

Saville said the overall interchange project, which involves the closure of several ramps, is still on schedule and will be finished in 1996. “Project schedules change continuously,” Saville said. “We try to keep people informed.”

Maloney said he formerly received regular bulletins published by Caltrans, but the bulletins stopped arriving several months ago. Also, he said, the information contained in them is now useless because of schedule changes.

Also closed are the ramp connecting the northbound Santa Ana Freeway to the westbound Garden Grove Freeway, which is scheduled to reopen in 1995, and the ramp connecting the southbound Santa Ana Freeway to the eastbound Garden Grove Freeway, which may reopen soon.