Council Approves Plan to Build Bridge

The City Council approved a plan Tuesday to build a bridge extending Via Princessa between Wiley Canyon and Circle J Ranch roads, opening a new east-west route that will handle more than 40,000 vehicles a day.

The vote was 4 to 1, with Councilwoman Jill Klajic opposing. Klajic said the council had not seen adequate plans for the design and appearance of the bridge.

“I’m going to reserve my vote until I see the pictures,” she said.

The other council members agreed with Connie Worden-Roberts, chairwoman of the transportation committee of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, who said, “Everybody has known there would be a need for that road. And that time has come.”

Completion of the $7-million bridge was a condition of the city’s 1987 approval of the Circle J Ranch housing development, a neighborhood of 700 homes nestled on about a dozen short, hilly streets in Newhall.

The developer, Beazer Homes Inc., will contribute $4.1 million to the project and manage construction of the bridge, city officials said.

Work is expected to begin in the next few months and continue through 2000. The 76-foot-wide bridge will pass over San Fernando Road, the railroad tracks and part of the Santa Clara River.

It will have one lane of traffic in each direction with room for one more lane as needed, a median and sidewalks, and, on the south side, a multipurpose trail. The General Plan of the city incorporated in 1987 originally called for a bridge 116 feet wide, but engineers say that won’t be necessary for at least 15 more years.

Some residents have expressed concern that the bridge will create a nuisance by increasing traffic. But many others accept the findings of city traffic engineers, who have stressed the need for an alternative east-west route through the increasingly traffic-congested Santa Clarita Valley.

Bridges have been a hot topic in Santa Clarita this year. Last week, work crews rescued commuters by promptly fixing a sinkhole on busy Bouquet Canyon Road next to a bridge spanning the Santa Clara River.

In February, thousands of train riders were stranded when a rain-weakened bridge in Newhall proved impassable for Metrolink trains.