Overhauled Main Street Overpass to Open Today : Transportation: Closed two years for structural improvements, the new bridge over the Santa Ana Freeway will accommodate twice as many cars.

The Main Street bridge, due to reopen today after two years and $38 million in improvements, is like any other overpass: an assembly of steel and concrete erected by an army of workers.

But to weary commuters, it will provide long-sought traffic relief. To business owners, it will provide a better route for customers. To Caltrans, it will be a showcase for newfangled car-pool lanes.

And to the city, the span’s reopening will mean even more.

“The city looks at the bridge as our front door,” said Josie LaQuay, a project manager for the city’s redevelopment agency. “You are going to open the front door and see a rebirth.”

The Main Street bridge will empty out into the city’s museum district and the MainPlace mall--the city’s largest shopping center. The reopening will unclog Main Street, one of the county’s busiest thoroughfares, which has been a dead end for more than two years.

“We’re ecstatic,” said Mike Metzler, president of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce. Though Metzler could not name any chamber businesses that have gone belly-up because of traffic problems, he said he expects business to improve.

“Thirty-eight thousand cars [per day] used to travel over the old bridge,” he said, “which hasn’t happened in, what, two years?”

Bridge improvements are related to the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway from six to 12 lanes, a project that will be completed by 1997.

The bridge’s crown jewels are rarely installed “drop-ramps” that will allow motorists to enter and exit northbound and southbound car-pool lanes of the freeway without having to weave through traffic.

No other section of freeway in Orange County offers car-poolers such perks. (At Barranca Parkway and the Santa Ana Freeway in Irvine, drop-ramps are available only on the southbound exit and the northbound on-ramp, said Albert Miranda, a Caltrans spokesman.)

The drop-ramps on the Main Street bridge, however, will not open until mid-1996.

Today, the bridge, tripled in length to 872 feet, will officially reopen. The first vehicle the city plans to drive across it is a vintage firetruck from the 1940s.

And, noted Caltrans spokeswoman Sara Schantz, “it’s been that long since the whole Santa Ana Freeway system was designed.”

Caltrans also added two lanes to the bridge, bringing the total to three in each direction, north and south. The capacity of the often-congested bridge has been doubled from 38,000 to 76,000 cars per day. That many cars, however, are not expected to use the bridge until 2010, Miranda said.

The permanent Main Street off-ramp will open for northbound freeway drivers Friday. Until then, they can continue to use the temporary off-ramp at Owens Drive. The southbound off-ramp is already open.

Construction on the bridge was finished 100 days ahead of schedule by contractor C.C. Myers, who netted about $200,000 in bonuses for his quick work, Miranda said. Myers also received a $15-million bonus for speedy earthquake repair work on the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles, raising questions about whether Caltrans had miscalculated the time it would take to finish the work.

But Miranda said the incentive system--which also penalizes contractors for finishing late--obviously worked in this case.

The bridge and related improvements may be a concession to the Southern California car culture, Miranda said, but there are provisions to encourage other forms of transportation. He noted that freeway access to bus and rail lines has also been improved.

The bridge reconstruction was funded by money from the federal government and a state fuel tax, Miranda said.

Some Floral Park area homeowners, however, are already anticipating problems related to the bridge reopening. When the bridge first closed, the city placed barricades at key neighborhood intersections to prevent overflow traffic from using the area as a detour.

The barricades were supposed to be temporary, but homeowners opposed to them now fear that the City Council will make the barriers permanent because some homeowners have asked that they remain in place.

Homeowners opposed to the barricades said they might bring their concerns, via protest, to the bridge reopening today.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Bridge Works The new and improved Main Street overpass is 872 feet long and 16 feet high and cost about $43,500 per foot to build. What it took to reconstruct the bridge: Cost: $38 million Working days: 930 Contractor hours: About 3 million Caltrans hours: 87,300 Concrete: 17,830 cubic feet Steel: 2,120 tons K-rail: 6 miles Paint: About 400 gallons for graffiti removal Striping: 16 miles Source: California Department of Transportation