Countywide : Work on El Toro Y to Get Early Start

Commuters who brave the snarled confluence of the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways in Irvine may see relief sooner than expected.

Design work on the planned $160-million reconstruction of the merger, known as the El Toro Y, has been completed, which will allow the project to go to bid six months ahead of schedule, according to the Orange County Transportation Authority.

Construction will start later this year instead of mid-1994, OCTA officials said.

“It took a tremendous amount of time, energy and teamwork” to accelerate the construction schedule, said OCTA Chairman Gary L. Hausdorfer.

Hausdorfer, a San Juan Capistrano councilman, has championed the project ever since he became the first South County representative on the OCTA board two years ago.

The project includes new car-pool lanes on the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways, elevated, direct-connect car-pool lane ramps so that car-poolers won’t have to change lanes to switch freeways, a new interchange at Bake Parkway, and a new system of parallel roads on both sides of the confluence to serve as bypasses.

About 300,000 vehicles a day travel through the confluence, which will be rebuilt mostly with funds from Measure M, the half-cent sales tax for traffic improvements approved by county voters in November, 1990. The city of Irvine, the Irvine Co. and developers enrolled in the county’s Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan will also contribute money.

By the year 2010, traffic through the area is expected to reach 400,000 vehicles per day.