NEWPORT BEACH : City Rejects Proposal for Pedestrian Bridge

The City Council this week rejected a proposal to build a pedestrian bridge over MacArthur Boulevard, despite a poll showing that more than half the residents living in the area favored spending money on it.

Some residents told the City Council on Monday that the proposed pedestrian bridge is the only safe way to cross busy MacArthur Boulevard on the way to and from the new Central Library.

Other residents said they didn’t want the narrow bridge because they think it would invite transients into their Harbor View Hills neighborhood.

But the City Council turned down the project Monday night for a much simpler reason.

“I just don’t think anybody will use it,” said Mayor Clarence J. Turner.

The bridge, which would have spanned MacArthur Boulevard midway between San Miguel Drive and Harbor View Drive, failed on a 3-3 vote. Council members Jean H. Watt, Janice A. Debay and Evelyn R. Hart supported spending $14,000 to study the feasibility of building the bridge, while Turner and Councilmen John C. Cox Jr. and Phil Sansone voted against it. Councilman John Hedges was absent.

“It is a treacherous intersection,” said Allen Swigert, who lives near MacArthur Boulevard and has three children, all under the age of 7. “I know, from my own experience, that we are definitely inviting disaster if we don’t provide a safer way to get” across MacArthur.

Other residents told the council that the bridge would block their views of the ocean and that there are not enough children in the neighborhood to warrant the expense of a bridge.

City officials polled 206 residents who live near the proposed bridge site. Of those surveyed, 133 either supported spending nearly $300,000 from Measure M funds to build the bridge or spending $14,000 to study it.