Yale Bridges Burning Issue in Irvine Vote : June ballot: After 12 years of debate, voters will decide whether two pedestrian overpasses will be widened to accommodate automobiles. City officials’ jobs are also on the line.

IRVINE —  In a city that has recently approved a precedent-setting ban on chemical pollutants, thoughtfully debated reallocation of national defense spending and lobbied hard to build Orange County’s first transportation monorail, a startlingly mundane and parochial issue has moved to the center of this year’s municipal elections.

The Yale overpasses, two Yale Avenue pedestrian bridges proposed for widening to allow vehicles to use them, have become the unlikely objects of Irvine political machinations in recent months, raising tempers and setting the stage for a climactic political showdown in June. After 12 years of rancorous debate, voters finally will decide the fate of the bridges on the June 5 ballot.

Privately, many city officials--including some bridge opponents--believe that the proposal to widen the bridges will pass, though most are cautious about making predictions this early.

“The Yale overpasses are a very big issue in this community, and many people feel that they’ve been wronged,” said Councilwoman Sally Anne Sheridan, who supports the proposal. “You’re going to see plenty of action on this between now and June.”

Mayor Larry Agran, an opponent of the measure and Sheridan’s rival in the mayor’s race, agrees, predicting that the issue--along with the related topic of neighborhood preservation--will dominate much of the campaign debate, if not its outcome.

The two proposed vehicular overpasses--one over the San Diego Freeway, the other over the Atchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe Railroad tracks--are included in the city’s General Plan, but the council voted in 1988 to study amending the plan so the bridges would stay as pedestrian overpasses. Angered by that vote, overpass proponents circulated petitions, which call for the bridge widenings to remain in the General Plan, though only as two-lane roads instead of four-lane ones.

The petition gathered 7,002 signatures, enough to force the council to put the matter to a vote. In response, the council put a second bridge measure on the ballot, allowing residents to reject widening altogether, rather than simply choosing between two and four lanes.

The petitioners who forced the matter argue that wider bridges will alleviate traffic on the city’s main arteries by giving residents an alternative route for short trips. Opponents retort that gains in convenience will come at the expense of safety, particularly of children who use the pedestrian overpasses to get to school.

Residents are sharply divided, and council meetings have become a regular forum for furious debate. Opposing sides cannot even agree on the city’s “impartial” ballot analysis of the bridge proposal, and proponents are now threatening to sue for a new one.

“It’s become a very emotional issue, probably more of an emotional issue than any that the city has faced in recent years,” said Gary Vanderpol, treasurer of Yale Action, the residents’ group pressing for the bridges to be widened.

The bridges have been the object of debate since the late 1970s, and passions flared so high in 1987 that nearly 1,000 residents packed the largest public hearing in Irvine’s history to debate the overpasses.

But despite years of deliberation, even the most basic details are in dispute: Opponents say it will cost about $9 million to expand the bridges; supporters put the figure at about half that. Opponents say the bridges will cause traffic and pedestrian hazards; proponents maintain that traffic on other streets will be alleviated and that accidents, injuries and pollution actually would decrease.

What increases the stakes in the debate this time around is that residents will cast their votes for mayor at the same time they settle the bridge dispute. Most city political observers agree that the mayoral campaign’s central issue could be the bridges and all they have come to represent.

“This issue goes to the heart of defining what a neighborhood is all about,” Agran said, citing questions such as traffic and safety. “These are issues that have been swimming around for 10 years or more, and now they are coming to the surface.”

On the council, sentiment runs strongly against the overpasses. Agran is vociferous in his opposition, and three of his colleagues share his position. Sheridan is the lone exception, as she is on many issues.

“A lot of people counted on these bridges being built,” she said. “Then, in the last election, the mayor said he would take those bridges out of the General Plan. That’s made the other side very mad.”

Sheridan, who refers to the council majority as “one vote and three echoes,” predicts that the overpass issue could prove crucial to the outcome of the mayor’s race, though she added that many other questions separate her and Agran as well.

As Yale overpass feuding has grown more intense, opponents of the two-lane bridge proposal show signs of concern. Councilman Cameron Cosgrove, a bridge opponent who is up for reelection, agreed with other council members when he said he hopes that voters will resist the temptation to cast “single issue ballots.” Candidates, he and other council members stressed, embody a host of positions beyond the Yale overpass question.