Waiting (and Waiting) for 55 Work to End

Cowan Heights shoppers who forgo the summer Nordstrom sale at South Coast Plaza. Determined drivers who venture onto surface streets with battleground names like Red Hill. Humble workers who awaken before dawn.

Whatever the strategy, it’s all in the name of one overarching goal: avoiding the hogtied traffic mess on the Costa Mesa Freeway, which has become, well . . .

“Hell is a good word for it,” says Lisa Wortman, a customer service manager from Fullerton whose drive time to Santa Ana has nearly doubled. She now has to hit the highway at 6:30 a.m., all for the portion of her commute that takes place on the 55.

The senior pastor of Red Hill Lutheran Church in Tustin invoked the Costa Mesa Freeway for a more heavenly purpose. During his sermon last week, the Rev. Thomas Brashears asked his congregation if they’d been stuck on the 55 lately. The response was universal.

“Time is the only resource we have that is nonrenewable,” Brashears said, which was the point of his sermon on spending time on the things that matter. “The time that you’re stuck in traffic, you can’t get back. It subtracts value from your life. That’s why everyone is so flipped out over the traffic. We only have a certain amount of time, and most people would rather spend that time with their family, their spouse, educational pursuits or their work.

“Time for people in Southern California is a very big thing.”

That’s why the state’s two projects to widen the 37-year-old freeway, which began last fall, have sparked new levels of frustration, cynicism and frayed nerves for Orange County commuters.

You’ll Love That Road, Someday

Some of the 210,000 daily drivers have resigned themselves to their fate: Driving on the 55 means never having to shift out of first gear. Drivers have padded their drive times and stocked their cars with cassettes and CDs of tranquil music as well as bottles of water and snacks for the road.

“You need a Porta Potti in the car,” Forrest Thompson says of the hours he has spent inching home to Costa Mesa on the 55. Thompson sat outside South Coast Plaza last week biding his time with a novel before he dared hop on to the tangled freeway. The 55 is a mainstay for Thompson and his wife, Tammy. They use it to get to Angels games. Tammy takes it to her hotel sales job in Anaheim. There seems to be no relief from the orange arrows and maddening detours.

But one day, you’ll love that road, a Caltrans spokeswoman said.

“All of these projects will improve the ease and flow of traffic,” said Sandra Friedman. “Our slogan is ‘A Better Drive on the 55.’ When we’re finished we’re going to have a state-of-the-art transportation system that everyone will be jealous of.”

That day is still way down the road. Caltrans has been tearing up the southern portion of the 55 to add a carpool lane and improve the MacArthur Boulevard exit. The northbound carpool lane has been finished. The southbound carpool lane, and the MacArthur exit, should be reopened in mid to late September, Friedman said.

Then Caltrans will tear up the Dyer Road east exit. The southern 55 project is costing the state $6.25 million.

Another 55 project, in Orange, is more comprehensive and more expensive. There, engineers and builders are widening the interchange at the Garden Grove Freeway, adding transition lanes for merging and exiting traffic and improving the offramps at Chapman, Katella and Lincoln avenues. It is costing $118 million, with the city of Orange chipping in $5 million.

“The 55 was definitely in need of improvements,” Friedman said.

Consider that, for the northern 55 project, Caltrans is using 64,300 cubic yards of concrete, 11.6 million pounds of steel and 28,332 feet of new sound walls. The northern project should wind down in 2002.

The traffic has spilled into side streets, creating havoc for drivers, residents and businesses along those routes.

Julie Kessinger, a Tustin floral designer, long avoided the freeways. She lives close enough to work to take surface streets. It used to take her 10 minutes to zip down Red Hill Road to her job on MacArthur--until the construction started.

“At first I thought it was just my imagination,” Kessinger said. “But it’s everybody who can’t get off the 55. Now they’re taking the 5, and getting off at Red Hill to go into Irvine. Now it takes me a half-hour to get to work.”

Some small stores, west of the 55, have noticed a dip in business.

Claudine Perez, who with her mother owns the Garden of Eat’N, which is a stone’s throw from the eerily empty MacArthur offramp, says there have been fewer customers at their sandwich shop this summer.

“People really hate that freeway,” she said.

Carpools and shuttle services, which used to barrel along the 55 even at congested times, have especially felt the crunch.

“I miss the carpool lane,” said Supershuttle driver Barry Hansen. “Now the 55 gets a little tedious. You can have a cigarette, have lunch, call your girlfriend. . . .” His passengers are seldom that easygoing, especially when they’re cutting it close to departure time for a flight at John Wayne Airport.

“We try to calm ‘em down,” Hansen said. “We tell ‘em bad stories” about worse traffic. Big help.

And there’s more to come: Another planned Caltrans project calls for linking the carpool lanes from the 55 to the San Diego Freeway.

“That will also affect traffic. They’re going to be building a transit-way to connect the carpool lanes between the two freeways,” Friedman said. “That’s going to start in late fall. All of these projects will improve the overall traffic flow, and safety, and increase capacity. I think we have a lot to look forward to.”

That’s one way to look at it.