Cure for Clogged Arteries? More Lanes

It happens every weekday afternoon with maddening, clockwork precision.

Traffic slows to a standstill on the northbound San Diego Freeway between Fairview Road and Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa as motorists trying to exit the freeway jockey for space with others trying to enter. All that weaving and braking create one of the most congested stretches of freeway in the county.

But an $82-million construction project, which breaks ground next year, aims to do some untangling.

That’s welcome news to Jason Dreyer, 26, who commutes from Rancho Santa Margarita to Garden Grove and gets caught in the mess every day.

“It’s murder trying to get over to the left lanes,” he said. “If you can’t avoid [the area], you pretty much have to suffer.”

The Orange County Transportation Authority hopes that its undertaking, the latest in a series of massive highway improvement projects in the county, will smooth the way for Dreyer and thousands of other commuters. The improvements aim to stop all the lurching and lane changing not only along that stretch of the San Diego Freeway but also on the other clogged roads and ramps that together make up the freeway’s interchange with the Corona del Mar Freeway.

Among the planned improvements: additional lanes, redesigned onramps and offramps, and two new bridges. Also planned is a loop linking the northbound Corona del Mar Freeway with the southbound Costa Mesa Freeway. Though the Costa Mesa is not part of the interchange, the traffic it generates contributes to the congestion in the area.

Traffic engineers say the project is similar to the recent improvements made to the Santa Ana Freeway-San Diego Freeway interchange in Lake Forest. Traffic there--though not always free-flowing--has improved, say OCTA officials, and they hope for similar results with the San Diego-Corona del Mar interchange.

“[The project] will not eliminate congestion. But it will definitely enhance” traffic flow, said Sam Hout, manager of project development for OCTA. “It will provide a better quality of life for [those] traveling through the interchange, and less lost time.”

OCTA, the lead agency on the project, is providing $58.7 million--the bulk of the funding. The Transportation Corridor Agencies and the cities of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach are also providing funds.

The stretch of the San Diego Freeway from Bear Street to Euclid Street is among the busiest in the county, serving some of the area’s most popular destinations.

South Coast Plaza, along with the Irvine Business Complex and John Wayne Airport, constitute the county’s largest employment center, according to an environmental impact study by the state Department of Transportation. Adding to the congestion is the traffic coming from the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, which opened in 1996.

And the growth that fueled all that congestion is expected to continue. Commercial, residential and industrial development is anticipated on several large tracts in the corridor, including the 90-acre Home Ranch property between Fairview Road and Harbor Boulevard. By 2020, the daily number of cars using the San Diego Freeway in the area is expected to jump 13%, from 280,00 to 317,000, according to Caltrans.

“We were getting a ton of pressure to make this a priority project and to find funding for it,” said David Elbaum, director of planning and development for OCTA. “It was one of those rare ones where everyone lined up in support of it.”

Construction is scheduled to begin in mid-1999, with completion in 2003. OCTA officials said the construction will cause traffic delays, and some freeway ramps may be temporarily closed.

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Interchange Improvements

The Orange County Transportation Authority will break ground next year on a project to improve traffic flow at the San Diego-Corona del Mar Freeway interchange. The work will be done in phases, with the first phase--the construction of a connector loop from the northbound Corona del Mar Freeway to the southbound Costa Mesa Freeway--to begin in mid-1999. The project is scheduled for completion in late 2003.

Increasing Traffic

An additional 37,000 cars are expected each day on this segment of the San Diego Freeway by 2020:

1998: 280,000 vehicles per day

2020: 317,000 vehicles per day

Construction Starts

Corona del Mar Freeway / Costa Mesa Freeway connector: Mid-1999

Corona del Mar Freeway improvements: Early 2000

San Diego Freeway improvements: Late 2000

Project completion: 2003

Source: Orange County Transportation Authority