Driven Mad

With a loud rumble, the lives of residents along Bake Parkway changed drastically on the morning of April 16, 1996.

That’s when the barriers came down on a new Interstate 5 exit at Bake Parkway, opening a convenient route for trucks to serve industrial parks, shopping centers and housing projects in the fast-growing foothill communities of Foothill Ranch and Rancho Santa Margarita.

But what is good for businesses and truckers has turned into a brake-shrieking, engine-grinding, around-the-clock ordeal for neighborhoods along Bake.

“The noise is like thunder,” said Gayle Peters, among the stream of residents who have pressed City Hall for relief. “We had one resident videotape all these cement trucks coming past at like 2 or 3 in the morning. He got fed up and moved.”

The backyard barbecues are noisiest along Annette Avenue, which runs alongside Bake. City officials say overall traffic along a three-block stretch of Bake between Jeronimo and Trabuco roads increased from an average of 20,000 vehicles in 1995 to 42,400 after the exit opened.

Although some neighborhoods have a concrete wall to buffer the noise, on other streets--like Annette Avenue--residents endure the roar of truck traffic with no barrier to reduce the sound.

In the past 18 months, Lake Forest traffic engineers have tried to thin the flow of trucks, only to discover that the proposed solutions could present more problems.

They looked into using weight and time restrictions to funnel trucks onto other roads in the city, but faced angry opposition from other neighborhoods that didn’t want fume-belching semis traveling past their homes.

“It was like, ‘Excuse me, you want to redirect traffic where?’ ” said Tom Holliman, who lives off Trabuco Road. “I’m an advocate of distributing the pain, but we have to come up with a truck flow plan that makes sense.”

Lake Forest went to neighboring cities Mission Viejo and Irvine, asking officials there to participate in a regional truck circulation plan that would siphon truck traffic from Bake Parkway onto streets with fewer homes, such as Alton Parkway.

Both cities politely refused. Irvine wanted compensation from Lake Forest to repair the daily wear and tear on streets caused by heavy trucks. Mission Viejo officials weren’t enthusiastic about the possibility of more trucks streaming past their neighborhoods.

Today, Lake Forest is no closer to resolving the situation than in 1996.

“It can surely be frustrating when you can’t see the answer leap out at you,” said City Manager Robert C. Dunek. Still, “we did want to hear all the voices and exhaust all the answers.”

Two alternatives remain. The first, building sound walls, is expensive. The other, the county providing an alternate route for trucks by finishing Alton Parkway in Irvine, won’t happen until sometime after 2000.

So-called “pass-through” traffic problems aren’t unique to Lake Forest. Part of the Southern California car culture, Orange County cities from Seal Beach to San Clemente deal with motorists from other communities using their streets.

“We have statistics that show that the average work trip is about 10 miles,” said Ron Taira, manager of technical analysis for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which helped build the Bake Parkway exit. “People have to go through several cities just to get to work and shop.”

But Lake Forest officials say their city’s pass-through problems are particularly bad, growing over the past decade in proportion to the developing foothill communities just to the east.

One OCTA official agreed. “There are a lot of pass-through communities; Lake Forest isn’t alone in that, but it’s true that the level of [pass-through traffic] they’re dealing with is very significant,” said Kia Mortazavi, OCTA manager of transportation planning.

Lake Forest officials say they’ve seen the situation on the horizon for years--even before the city’s 1991 incorporation--but had relied on a county promise to complete Alton Parkway in Irvine, providing another eastern route for truckers.

However, county officials say they aren’t aware of any promises made to Lake Forest, but acknowledge that the pending closure of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station is delaying the road project.

With a portion of Alton running through the Marine base, county traffic engineer Ignacio Ochoa said the county won’t find out whether it can acquire property needed for the road project until at least mid-1999, when the base closes.

“The No. 1 key [to decreasing truck traffic on Bake] is Alton Parkway,” Councilwoman Marcia Rudolph said. “The No. 2 key is providing sound mitigation the best way we can.”

City officials say they will likely look into how, and who, should pay for sound walls. Currently, Lake Forest is checking into partial solutions, such as getting trucking firms to use the Foothill tollway, which goes past Rancho Santa Margarita and Foothill Ranch.

In the meantime, residents put up with the constant barrage of sound, a situation worsened by the clattering of trains passing less than 200 feet from some neighborhoods.

“The traffic I can live with,” said Issa Abu Muhor, a resident of Annette Avenue. “But the vibrations from those trains feels like an earthquake. You can see the lampshades move in our home.”

Gayle Peters says her expectations for a quieter neighborhood in the foreseeable future have diminished greatly.

“It’s gotten to the point where we’ve had all the energy taken out of us,” she said. “When we started, we were asking for everything. Now, all we’d like is a few more hours of sleep.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Truck Trouble

The amount of traffic on Bake Parkway has mushroomed the last five years, with the largest increase occurring after the opening of the Interstate 5 exit in spring 1996. Number of vehicles each day:

*--*

Bake Parkway 1992 1993 1994 1995 Trabuco Road to Toledo Way 16,000 15,000 21,000 20,600 Toledo Way to Jeronimo Road 14,000 17,000 20,000 19,100 Jeronimo Road to Muirlands Boulevard 15,000 19,000 19,000 21,400

Bake Parkway 1996 Trabuco Road to Toledo Way 37,400 Toledo Way to Jeronimo Road 39,200 Jeronimo Road to Muirlands Boulevard 50,600

*--*

Source: City of Lake Forest; Researched by FRANK MESSINA / For The Times