Key Anaheim Projects to Proceed : Transportation: Officials gamble on Disneyland expansion in planning freeway ramps, garage.

Gambling that the Walt Disney Co. will follow through on its $3-billion Disneyland expansion, transportation officials are moving ahead with plans for $50 million in ramps along the Santa Ana Freeway and the world’s largest parking garage in Anaheim.

Caltrans and Orange County transportation officials have agreed to commit money in the belief that the ramps and garage will be needed no matter what happens in the tourist mecca around Disneyland. Construction would still be several years off.

“We decided we couldn’t afford to wait for their decision any longer, because of the I-5 widening project,” said Lisa Mills, chief deputy at the Orange County Transportation Authority.

The decision came this week when the California Transportation Commission staff reacted favorably to funding the garage in March. Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly said Friday that he has talked to some state commission members about their support for the project and knows of no opposition.

A decision to proceed with the ramps without Westcot was made several months ago, officials said.

Daly acknowledged the state’s projected $3-billion transportation funding shortfall over the next few years, and competing priorities such as earthquake retrofitting of freeways and bridges. County transportation board members are scheduled on Monday to be asked to approve shifting some sales tax funds to the freeway segment through Anaheim because of the state’s shortfall.

The county transportation association has long said that improvements to the freeway are the county’s top transit priority.

But the governor’s funding commitment to Disney’s Westcot project has come under fire from some homeowners groups, who complain that the state cannot even afford to buy tanker planes needed to fight the kind of wildfires that recently destroyed parts of Laguna Beach and Malibu.

Nevertheless, Daly said the decision to combine the freeway ramp and garage projects with the Santa Ana Freeway widening through Anaheim makes sense.

“Nothing I’ve seen or heard makes me believe anything other than that Westcot is going to be built,” the mayor said. “But we need all the help we can get. . . . The project is important to Anaheim, Orange County and California.”

Disney officials who are familiar with the freeway and garage projects could not be reached for comment Friday.

The massive, $1.6-billion project to double the width of the Santa Ana Freeway has been progressing steadily from Irvine through the junction of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways and will soon reach the segment adjacent to Disneyland.

Construction of both the freeway ramps and the combined garage, which also will be a transit stop, will begin in 1996, Mills said.

Adding the ramps later would cost additional millions and would mean digging up concrete only recently poured, officials said.