Ford Road Realignment to Add Lane to MacArthur Boulevard

Dear Street Smart:

I do have a pet peeve about a bad traffic corner in Orange County. It is the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Ford Road as you travel north on MacArthur in the Irvine/Newport Beach area.

MacArthur is two lanes from San Joaquin Hills Road to just a few feet short of Ford when it turns into three lanes. After you pass Ford, the road immediately cuts back to two lanes. A very short distance farther, it opens up to three lanes again.

I usually drive in the right-hand lane going north and travel 50 to 55 m.p.h. along there. The posted speed limit is 55. As you approach Ford, the fast cars in the left lane (cut across traffic to get in the far right lane.) The minute the signal changes, these cars speed on through the intersection and immediately cut back to the fast lane on the left, cutting people off who are trying to go through the intersection at a safe speed.

They scare the living daylights out of me. I wish there were some way to get a helicopter there that could ticket all the cars that do the cutting back and forth through the morning and evening rush hours. Actually, it is dangerous almost any hour of the day.

Why couldn’t the road be opened up to three lanes in that short distance (it really is short) between Ford and the new Newport Coast Drive?

Jean C. Falconer, Newport Beach

Ask, and ye shall receive. Plans are currently in the works to widen MacArthur to three lanes between Ford and Newport Coast Drive, said Rich Edmonston, traffic engineer for Newport Beach. Construction on the 200-foot stretch of road is expected to begin in about six months and take a year, Edmonston said. The lane addition is part of a larger project to realign Ford Road.

“The normal course of events would have been to wait for the Irvine Co. to develop their land there,” Edmonston said. “But the Ford Road realignment provided a reasonable opportunity to go in there and pave out that 200 feet so it would be continuous through there.”

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Dear Street Smart:

I recently contacted Officer Lopes of the San Juan Capistrano office of the California Highway Patrol to ask what is the minimum speed limit for vehicles on Southern California freeways through urban areas. Officer Lopes’ answer was that there is none; there are no CHP guidelines on the question, and that possible citations are entirely at the discretion of the citing officer.

Officer Lopes said she personally would cite a driver when the traffic was moving freely at a 65-m.p.h. speed and the offending driver was going 55 m.p.h. in the slow (right) lane. When asked how her statement squares with the 55 m.p.h. maximum speed, she stated that such inconsistencies are the result of reduced funding of the CHP by the Legislature.

Her responses and attitude are another example of why California is moving toward anarchy.

Louis G. Vargo, Trabuco Canyon

I called the CHP’s San Juan Capistrano office to give Officer Wendy Lopes a chance to comment on your letter. But the agency’s policy requires that only the public information officer respond to media questions.

In this case, Officer Bruce Lian responded to your letter. He corroborated Officer Lopes’ statements about the CHP’s policy on freeway speeds.

“The maximum speed limit is 55 m.p.h.,” Lian said. “Anyone going over 55 is in violation of the law, and anyone going slower than 55 m.p.h. is required by law to travel in the right-hand lane,” he said.

“You can go slower than 55 m.p.h., but if you are in any other lane than the right-hand lane, you can be cited for impeding traffic,” Lian said. “If you want to go 50 m.p.h., for example, do it in the right-hand lane.”

Officer Sam Haynes, a spokesman for the CHP in Sacramento, also had something to say about the speed limits in California.

It is true there is not a minimum speed limit for California’s freeways, he said. CHP officers are primarily on the lookout for drivers who could be creating a safety hazard for themselves or other drivers, whether they are driving erratically, following too close, or driving at an inappropriately slow speed, he said.

It is left to an individual officer’s discretion to decide if someone is driving too slow or too fast because there are so many situations when driving the posted speed limit of 55 m.p.h. is not safe, Haynes said.

“Our data shows that driving too fast for conditions tends to create more risk and cause more accidents than just exceeding the posted speed limit,” said Haynes. “But, depending on weather and traffic and visibility, even 10 m.p.h. can be considered driving at an excessive speed,” he said.

As for nabbing speeders, it is not the CHP’s top priority. But catching drunk drivers, who are responsible for 42% of all fatal collisions, is top priority, Haynes said. Also high on the list is catching people who are not wearing their seat belts.

“The CHP is not not paying attention (to speeding), but there are better ways of using our resources than trying to stop the entire world that is exceeding the speed limit,” said Haynes. “Statewide, 54% of the drivers are exceeding the speed limit on the freeways,” he said.

Haynes does say that motorists who choose to drive 55 m.p.h. would do best to stay in the slow lane. While it is up to an individual officer to decide what’s appropriate, there is less likelihood of getting pulled over and ticketed for traveling at 55 m.p.h. in the slow lane, he said.