Long O.C. Drive to Ease Congestion Gains Speed

By GEOFF BOUCHER

June 21, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Caltrans traffic expert Joe El Harake spends his days studying Orange County freeway congestion, but it was a knock on the door of his Mission Viejo home one evening that crystallized his research.

“This is from my dad,” the little girl from across the street told El Harake as she handed him a six-pack of imported beer. “He said to thank you for getting him home in time for dinner.”

Defying grim regional trends and history, traffic on Orange County freeways is better than it was five years ago, according to experts and commuters. After spending $1 billion over the past 17 years on traffic improvements, the county is finally finding the hard drive is getting easier.

That boast is backed up by Michael McNally, a civil engineering professor with the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCI.

“The saying has always been that ‘You can’t build yourself out of congestion,’ but here in Orange County we did just that,” he said. “We’ve definitely eased the traffic crunch.”

Experts point to additional lanes, redesigned freeways and new toll roads as bringing relief to Orange County even as neighboring counties grapple with mounting congestion.

But that relief is hardly uniform. The strides made in South County still elude North County, where ongoing construction creates daily snarls. Still, the trend is turning heads.

“What is happening in Orange County is a bright spot,” said El Harake, who in recent months has met with a parade of curious engineers from Australia, France, Israel and half a dozen other countries. “We’re setting the standard.”

Even hardened veterans of the freeways are enjoying the break from braking.

“Where they have finished construction, it’s beautiful, it’s wide open,” says Vince McDonough of Costa Mesa, whose commute takes him south through the El Toro “Y” or on the San Joaquin Hills toll road on work days. “It’s a huge difference from the way it used to be.”

Others, who say their small chunk of the freeway life has not improved, accuse transportation officials of painting a happy face on a grim situation.

“It’s definitely worse,” says Ilona Galant of Newport Beach, who says she leaves later and later from work to escape the crush on the Costa Mesa Freeway. “They’re crazy if they think any of it is getting better.”

Caltrans studies present a different picture. Data on the volume, density and direction of traffic shows more free-flowing conditions, El Harake says. That’s the good news. The bad news is that any gains might erode in the months to come.

“And drivers are to blame,” McNally says. Morning commuters who find their 30-minute ride to work now takes 20 minutes might leave later. Other drivers on the same freeway do the same thing, and the result is more cars crammed into the smaller time window--better known as “traffic congestion.”

There is little engineers can do to alter human behavior, El Harake says with a smile. But designers and builders can at least make more room for drivers. In recent years, the projects brought to bear on Orange County freeways have made the thoroughfares more livable for commuters who spend much of their day in their cars.

“Think of it as a family of five living in a two-bedroom house,” El Harake said. “That’s how it was before. Now they live in a four-bedroom house. The house could still use some fixing up, but it’s a lot more comfortable. . . . We’ve turned a corner.”

Among the projects cited by officials as thinning the traffic tide are the addition of car-pool lanes to the Orange Freeway and the widening of the Costa Mesa Freeway. Key surface street improvements, such as changes on the Weir Canyon Road feeder to the Riverside Freeway, have also eased the commute, El Harake said.

Toll roads have been credited with siphoning drivers off clogged freeways, although they have also been criticized for falling below pre-construction ridership projections. On an average weekday in May, more than 104,000 drivers used either the San Joaquin Hills or Foothill toll roads, according to Michelle Miller, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies.

More Orange County toll roads are in the works, and they have been of special interest to overseas engineers and officials visiting to learn lessons they hope to apply to their own areas. The Eastern Corridor is set to open by the end of the year to link north Orange County and Riverside County to south Orange County. The Foothill South, linking the existing toll road to San Clemente, remains in the planning phases.

Still, the glowing reviews come with a major caveat: It’s not that the traffic jams at the El Toro “Y” and other rough rides have stopped, they just don’t last as long. In Southern California, improvement in congestion is measured more by clock than by the car, so the relief being trumpeted by local officials is actually a narrowing of the gridlock time window.

At the Y, for instance, merging traffic from the San Diego Freeway and Interstate 5 created a “choke point” that in years past brought drivers to a near standstill for as much as eight hours a day. Now the major slowdowns last just four hours a day. Many commuters saw 20 minutes shaved off their commute after the $166-million project widened the confluence to, at one spot, 26 lanes.

But, logically, that improvement is lost on drivers who travel only in rush hour. “The people driving at the peak periods wonder what we’re happy about,” El Harake said. “But the peak period is shorter, and that’s a big difference.”

Unfortunately, the breathing room created for South County still eludes central North County, where drivers deal daily with major construction on the Riverside and Santa Ana freeways.

“It’s a mess up here,” Fullerton Mayor Don Bankhead said. “But it’s growing pains. It’s going to be a lot better when they’re done, so most people aren’t complaining.”

The Santa Ana, the artery that links Orange County to Los Angeles, is undergoing major surgery from Beach Boulevard south to the notorious “Orange Crush”--the nexus of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways. Completed earlier was a commute-smoothing widening of the Santa Ana Freeway from the “Y” north to the Orange Crush.

The project is scheduled to be completed in 2000 and will widen the heavily used freeway from six to eight lanes and add a carpool lane. Ten major surface streets or ramps will also be improved to smooth traffic flow on and around the corridor.

The final product will dazzle drivers, Bankhead said, but “even when the work is done, it won’t be enough with what’s coming.”

What’s coming is ominously described by officials as “two Chicagos,” the projected population growth for Southern California by 2020 that is expected to overwhelm the region’s latticework of freeways. Against that backdrop, some officials say the current relief may be a brief oasis.

“We need to be realistic about what’s happening,” said Dave Elbaum, director of planning for the Orange County Transportation Authority. “We’ve poured a lot of concrete and addressed a lot of problems, but there are bigger issues ahead.”

A study presented last year by the Southern California Assn. of Governments predicted 6.7 million new residents in the six counties, with about 575,000 of them calling Orange County home. The study offered the bleak forecast that commuters in the region will spend half their drive time stuck in traffic.

Another forecast, this one published by the Orange County Transportation Authority, offered numbers that add up to commuter misery: By 2020, the county’s drivers will spend 81% more time driving to work at speeds 26% slower on roadways with 42% more traffic.

South Orange County will be a prime growth area, while the east-west corridors in North County are ill-equipped to handle the expected crush of Inland Empire commuters, studies show. Bankhead, for one, says urban rail and other non-freeway commuting options will be desperately needed to lighten the load on the Riverside Freeway.

“The freeway projects they have planned are great, and things will get better up here like they are in South County,” the mayor said. “But how long will it last?”

The clock is also ticking on Measure M money, the primary engine behind most of the improvements. One-third of the money expected to be generated in Orange County by the half-cent sales tax has been spent, and the 20-year tax embraced in November 1990 by traffic-weary voters will expire in the middle of the looming population growth.

Perhaps worse, Elbaum points out that the “quick fixes” for county gridlock have all been exploited. The trouble spots where lanes could easily be added or redesigned, for instance, have been taken care of, and the remaining troubles--such as the Riverside Freeway woes--will likely be intense and costly, he said.

With those trends and tightening options, Elbaum offered a tip to the Orange County commuters now driving on free-flowing freeways. “Enjoy it while you can.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Traffic Relief

Experts say Orange County freeways are less congested than five years ago thanks to improvements and lane additions. Additionally, new toll roads have siphoned off an average of 104,000 drivers from the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways. But the relief is hardly uniform. Key North County freeways are undergoing construction that creates daily gridlock.

1. Riverside Freeway (91): HOV lanes are being added, new overpasses and major improvements at the 91/57 exchange.

Gridlock hours

Current: 9 hours

2001: Free flow

Average Daily Traffic

Current: 219,000

2001: 272,000

****

2. Santa Ana Freeway (I-5): Experts hope HOV-to-HOV transitions will improve traffic flow by 2001. Heavy congestion due to construction despite no lane closure.

Gridlock hours

Current: 8 hours

2001: Free flow

Average Daily Traffic

Current: 172,000

2001: 221,000

****

3. Orange Freeway (57): Orange Crush more congested as traffic sidesteps I-5 construction.

Gridlock hours

Current: 5 hours

2001: 4 hours

Average Daily Traffic

Current: 194,000

2001: 249,000

****

4. Riverside Freeway (91): Eastern Transportation Corridor will relieve Gridlock hours on the Costa Mesa Freeway by diverting vehicles off 91, 55 and I-5 freeways.

Gridlock hours

Current: 5 hours

2001: 3 hours

Average Daily Traffic

Current: 227,000

2001: 255,000

****

5. Costa Mesa Freeway (55): Improvements include adding two lanes at Dyer Road to reduce traffic bottleneck.

Gridlock hours

Current: 7 hours

2001: 5 hours

Average Daily Traffic