Orange County Freeway Project Nearing the End of the Road

It’s been a tense four years of dust, demolition and detours, but the largest freeway construction project in Orange County’s history--the $1.1-billion overhaul of the Santa Ana Freeway between the Orange Crush and Los Angeles County--is nearing completion with only weeks to spare, officials say.

For weary Santa Ana Freeway commuters, it means a more streamlined drive between the Orange Crush--where three freeways converge--and the Los Angeles County border.

No more squeezed lanes or concrete-barrier obstacle courses. No more blocked off-ramps or confusing detours. Officials believe drive times will be shorter, but would not predict how much.

With Disney’s new California Adventure theme park expected to draw 7 million new visitors to the area early next year, and with the patience of thousands of business owners and residents worn thin from around-the-clock construction, transportation officials said the bulk of the work will be completed by December and within budget.

Already, officials are preparing to open up four new traffic lanes--two in each direction--between the Crush and Santa Ana Street, which officials say will greatly relieve gridlock.

“There’s a sense of relief the project is finally near completion,” said Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, who is an Orange County Transportation Authority board member. “If the project had fallen behind schedule, that would have been a real problem.”

The rest of the mammoth Interstate 5 North Improvement Project, which will widen a 9 1/2-mile stretch of freeway from six lanes to 10 and reconfigure numerous surface street approaches and ramps, is scheduled to be completed next spring.

Officials say that the upgrades will nearly double traffic capacity on the freeway snaking through the heart of Orange County’s commerce and tourism. Disneyland, Edison Field, Arrowhead Pond, the Anaheim Convention Center and the Block at Orange are but a few of the anticipated beneficiaries of improved freeways.

Currently, 190,000 vehicles a day course through the jammed artery, and engineers say that the upgrades will accommodate a total of 360,000 vehicles a day.

The project follows the widening of the southern half of the Santa Ana Freeway from the El Toro Y to Dana Point. That project cost $166 million and took two years. An earlier project, costing about $579 million, widened the freeway from the El Toro Y through Santa Ana.

Even with all this work, traffic officials say, the Orange Crush won’t be shedding its nickname any time soon, with slowdowns still expected during peak commuting hours.

However, Caltrans spokeswoman Rose Orem said the improvements would greatly streamline traffic at such freeway junctures as State College Boulevard, Katella Avenue, Harbor Boulevard, Brookhurst Street and Euclid Avenue.

Two of project’s additional traffic lanes are carpool lanes, and Orem said carpoolers will now have an uninterrupted 38-mile drive from Dana Point to Buena Park.

One design feature, the so-called “Disney flyover,” will lift carpool traffic off the Santa Ana Freeway, transfer it over numerous lanes via a bridge and deposit it on Disneyland Drive, just blocks from the theme park’s massive parking garage.

Khalid Bazmi, a senior transportation engineer at Caltrans, said several interchanges were finished far ahead of schedule. In one case, workers converted a highway overpass at Katella Avenue to a freeway underpass in five working days. Engineers thought it would take a month. “That is making very good time,” Bazmi said. “The majority of the work is done at night and that’s not very easy.”

Orange County Transportation Authority Chairwoman Laurann Cook said the Interstate 5 North Improvement Project would be the last large-scale project funded through Measure M, the half-cent transportation sales tax county voters approved in 1990.

The improved Santa Ana Freeway will drop from 10 lanes to six at the Los Angeles County border. Orange County transportation officials said they were unsure how big the traffic backup will be at the border.

“It’s our hope that the project will continue through Los Angeles County,” Cook said. “We all have to realize that road projects don’t end at county borders.”