Bristol Interchange Reconstruction Done

City crews over the weekend completed a yearlong project to improve the flow of traffic in the area where Bristol Street intersects the San Diego Freeway, and all ramps are now open.

“It should make it a lot easier for shoppers to get to South Coast Plaza,” City Manager Allan L. Roeder said Monday.

When the freeway was built through Costa Mesa more than 30 years ago, Bristol Street was bordered by bean fields, and South Coast Plaza was not yet built.

The rapid growth of the area has created chronic traffic congestion on both the street and the freeway.

To facilitate traffic flow, the city widened the Bristol Street bridge over the freeway, retrofitted it to meet seismic safety standards and made improvements to ramps.

Costa Mesa traffic planners took on the $4-million improvement after Caltrans put it on hold until it could complete a countywide project to widen the Santa Ana Freeway, Roeder said.

“We felt it was important because that is one of the key interchanges for this part of the county,” he said.