Idea to Build Highway Atop River Reborn

For years, local officials thought a proposal to extend the Orange Freeway by 11 miles from the infamous Orange Crush interchange to the San Diego Freeway was all but dead.

After all, the cost of building a four-lane highway above the Santa Ana River had become high -- at least $700 million -- and plans were complicated by environmental concerns and opposition from nearby neighborhoods. Even private toll-road companies with franchise rights granted by the Legislature could not make the project a reality despite a decade of effort.

On Monday, however, the Orange County Transportation Authority is set to take another look at the controversial idea. Supervisor Chris Norby, who sits on the OCTA board of directors, wants to fast-track a $1.1-million study to determine whether the 57 Extension is practical from engineering and political standpoints.

Norby contends that if the new highway is feasible, it would improve mobility for Orange County residents far more than CenterLine, the county’s proposed $1.5-billion light-rail system through Irvine, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana.

“Nothing is ever dead if it’s an idea,” said Norby, who has made the Orange Freeway one of his top priorities. “We need to look at things that will relieve traffic in this county. OCTA is too concentrated on Centerline, which costs lots of money and will have little impact.”

Estimates indicate that the 11-mile rail system will have about 22,000 boardings a day to start and 32,000 after 15 years of operation. Supporters of the extension, which is the same length as CenterLine, say the road will have more capacity to meet future transportation demands.

Should the expedited study be approved by the board, it might revive more than just a highway proposal. It could resurrect considerable political and environmental opposition in Santa Ana and Fountain Valley, where the extension would pass through densely populated areas and interfere with plans to protect the Santa Ana River watershed.

“The 57 is like a bad nightmare that won’t go away. I have been fighting against it for as long as I can remember,” said Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), who has introduced legislation to create a Santa Ana River conservancy. “This is the wrong project at the wrong time.”

Correa’s bill would create a government authority to preserve and restore land along the Santa Ana River, the largest stream system in Southern California. The conservancy would sell bonds to pay for open space and recreational facilities.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to oppose the measure. There were concerns that it would create a redundant layer of government and block the proposed expansion of the Orange Freeway, which has been included in the county’s transportation planning for many years.

The extension is one of three highway projects approved for further analysis by the OCTA board in December. The other roads in the three-year studies are the Riverside Freeway in Orange County and the San Diego Freeway north of the Corona del Mar Freeway.

Last week, five OCTA board members who make up the agency’s regional planning and highway committee unanimously recommended to their colleagues that the 57 study be expedited by hiring additional staff and consultants. The goal is to cut the research time in half.

OCTA planners say the extension would relieve congestion on the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways and the Orange Crush, the interchange of the Garden Grove, Orange and Santa Ana freeways.

The Orange Freeway between the Riverside Freeway and Orangethorpe alone handles about 290,000 vehicles a day. By 2025, that figure is expected to increase to 340,000.

OCTA staff members also say the project will reduce traffic on north-south surface streets that parallel almost the entire route of the proposed extension.

“We want to look at this to see if we can do it,” Norby said. “We need to know how to build something like this over a river. What the reaction of people along the route would be.”

Opponents say the proposed extension is in an area filled with parks, golf courses and residential neighborhoods that are among the county’s most densely populated. There are also engineering problems and earthquake risks, they say, associated with building in one of the county’s main flood-control channels.

“Hopefully, he [Norby] will find another idea,” said Fountain Valley City Councilman Gus Ayer, an opponent of the extension. “The city has been pretty negative on this for some time.”

Deflecting potential criticism from highway supporters, Correa said the fact that he lives next to the extension’s potential right of way has nothing to do with his Assembly bill or his opposition to the road. Before he moved next to the Santa Ana River, Correa fought against a proposal to construct the extension as a tollway financed and operated by a private company.