New Stretch of Interstate 5 Should Shed Rain Puddles

Dear Street Smart:

Easter Sunday was my first drive along the newly opened stretch of Interstate 5 from El Toro north to the Y interchange. That morning it was raining hard and there was little traffic. As I drove through the slightly lower stretch of freeway before the Lake Forest off-ramp I noticed two or three inches of standing water. My car hydroplaned a half lane to the right before going through the deepest part and regaining traction.

With all of the construction going on is Caltrans not improving the drainage from the freeway surface? This would have been very serious with any normal amount of traffic.

Opher Banarie Laguna Niguel

Your Easter morning “E Ride” was caused by an extraordinary amount of rainfall coupled with only partially completed drainage improvements, said Orange County Transportation Authority spokesman John Standiford.

Construction on the El Toro Y portion of the Santa Ana Freeway, where it intersects with the San Diego Freeway, won’t be entirely complete until next year, Standiford said. Drainage is a high priority in designing that part of the freeway, he said, because of the proximity of San Diego Creek and the low-lying roadway.

Already a drainage culvert next to the freeway and just north of the spot where you saw pooling has been widened and lengthened to handle more runoff, he said. In addition, some catch basins and more drains will be placed on the sides of the freeway and in the center divider.

“We are quite confident that when this project is completed that motorists won’t experience a drainage problem at all,” Standiford said.

Dear Street Smart:

When does Caltrans intend to repair or replace the “glare screen” on the center divider of the San Diego Freeway between the San Gabriel River and Garden Grove freeways and various other places along the San Diego Freeway? The glare from opposing traffic is a safety hazard when driving in the diamond lane.

F. W. Stewart Capistrano Beach

The glare is probably going to get worse before anything is done. The California Department of Transportation said it is not going to repair or replace the steel mesh glare screens on freeway center dividers in Orange County.

Caltrans spokeswoman Rose Orem said that the steel mesh is easily damaged and maintenance workers have been exposed to danger from oncoming traffic when they repeatedly had to make repairs.

Therefore, she said, Caltrans has decided that instead of placing steel mesh screens on top of the concrete medians, the agency will use high concrete median barriers on new freeways from now on.

“The concrete will be nearly maintenance free,” Orem said.

Caltrans also ultimately intends to retrofit all of the steel mesh glare screens on existing freeways with concrete, she said. But the agency currently doesn’t have money budgeted for that purpose.

Meanwhile, she said, the steel mesh screens aren’t being repaired, and when they are damaged badly enough they are being removed. Orem denied that the disappearance of glare screens from various spots along Orange County’s freeways poses any hazard.

She said the screens actually were intended to discourage drivers on one side of the freeway from gawking at accidents on the other side.

Blocking the glare of headlights from oncoming traffic, however, proved a side benefit of the screens, she said.

Orem said glare screens are missing in a few small, scattered sections of the San Diego Freeway between the San Gabriel River and Garden Grove freeways, where you say the glare especially bothers you. So far, she said, the rate of accidents in that area has not increased.

“Once a large portion of glare screen is missing, we will work on replacing it” with concrete, she said.

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition.