Board Torpedoes Freeway Overpass : Schools: Pedestrian bridge under construction would have served children in Santa Ana district. But opponents saw it as a possible conduit for criminals.

To hoots and applause from a packed audience, the Santa Ana Unified District school board agreed Tuesday to ask Caltrans to tear down a half-finished bridge it has spent $600,000 to build.

The unanimous vote means the California Department of Transportation will probably spend another $60,000 to tear down the controversial footbridge that children would have used to cross the Santa Ana Freeway to get to school.

Issues remain unresolved as to how the school district will pay to bus the children to school instead.

The pedestrian bridge at 20th and Spurgeon would have connected the sedate residential streets of the Northeast Neighborhood with a lower-income neighborhood on the west side, dotted with apartment buildings and home to a growing number of new immigrants.

More than 700 residents on the wealthier side of the freeway have signed petitions opposing the bridge over the last six weeks, saying they fear it will grant criminals access to their streets.

They argued that the school district should simply bus the children who would have used the bridge, particularly since a new elementary school is slated for construction closer to their homes.

“My action tonight would be to let Caltrans know that we do not need the overcrossing,” board member Robert W. Balen said to thunderous applause from more than 200 bridge opponents at the meeting, which was moved to Hoover Elementary School in the Northeast neighborhood to accommodate them.

Caltrans was building the $1.3-million bridge to replace a tunnel that about 133 schoolchildren had used to trek to school on the eastern side until a freeway widening project closed it last year.

The agency has been paying the school district to bus the children to school during construction of the overpass. But neighborhood opposition to the project has become so fierce in recent weeks that Caltrans officials told the school district that if the children didn’t need the bridge, Caltrans would consider halting construction and tearing it down.

Barry A. Rabbit, Caltrans deputy district director of construction, said he ordered construction halted about a week ago when he was informed that the school district might not need the crossing after all. Now Caltrans will await final word from city officials--who have vowed to support the school board’s decision--to proceed with demolition, he said.

Board members and residents on both sides of the bridge, however, have warned that the movement by neighborhoods to seal off their borders in a bid for safety fails to deal with the city’s increasingly diverse population.

On Tuesday, the board urged opponents of the bridge to put that same energy into helping build “bridges of the heart,” as board member Rosemarie Avila said, among Santa Ana’s diverse communities.

“One thing I’ve always believed is that communities must work together, especially in Santa Ana. We can’t isolate ourselves,” board President Sal Mendoza told the audience, urging them to pressure city officials to build playgrounds or greenbelt space on the western side of the freeway.

“I do not support the bridge, but what I would like to see is a win-win situation for the community as a whole,” he said.

The school board heard testimony from more than a dozen bridge opponents at its meeting last month but declined to vote on the matter. On Balen’s recommendation, the district polled residents on the western side of the bridge, whose children would use the crossing to walk to school.