Countywide : Supervisors Asked to Drop Bridge Plans

A county engineering study released this week asks the Board of Supervisors to abandon a proposal to build two bridges over the Santa Ana river to relieve traffic congestion.

Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach residents, whose cities would be connected by the bridges, have complained for two years that the proposed routes would disrupt their neighborhoods.

“The bridges would bring a tremendous amount of traffic through, and noise pollution,” said Costa Mesa Councilman Joe Erickson, a longtime opponent of the bridges.

The county master plan currently calls for one bridge to link 19th Street in Costa Mesa with Banning Avenue in Huntington Beach, and another to link Gisler Street in Costa Mesa and Garfield Avenue in Huntington Beach.

The two bridges have been on the county’s master plan since 1956. Huntington Beach fire and police officials endorsed the bridges, saying that they would make it easier for cooperation between cities during an emergency. And county officials have estimated that it would cost $29.4 million to build the bridges but $48.3 million to alleviate traffic congestion in other ways.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who represents both cities, said she supports an engineering proposal to study alternatives to the bridges. She said she wants the other supervisors to join her in asking for an environmental study of the traffic situation, which is required before the county can scrap the bridge project.

“We feel there are much more cost-effective ways to provide for future traffic,” Erickson said. Opponents of the bridges have been meeting weekly as the Costa Mesa Citizens Transportation Alternatives Study Group.

One of the proposals before the supervisors is to create a cooperative process to study the traffic situation. That would involve the cities of Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Fountain Valley, the county and the California Department of Transportation, said Al Tello, one of Wieder’s assistants.

Fountain Valley and Newport Beach would be included since their cities border two of the streets that approach the proposed bridges.

The engineering study also upholds Erickson’s concern that East 19th Street not be widened, as had been planned. Erickson said the proposed widening would require the removal of 69 Costa Mesa homes. The supervisors ordered the engineering study in June, 1992.