Widening Job May Jam California 78 for Months

A wider, higher, drier freeway will be the final result, but a motorist’s nightmare is likely in the interim as California Department of Transportation engineers tackle the western end of California 78, North County’s only east-west freeway.

Work began earlier this week on the $6.5-million project, which will widen the freeway between Interstate 5 and College Boulevard to six lanes, with auxiliary lanes at interchanges. Caltrans engineers also are planning to raise the California 78 roadbed 6 feet between Jefferson Street and El Camino Real so that the freeway will never again be flooded as it was more than a decade ago.

The western end of California 78 is the most-traveled stretch of the 16.6-mile road that links Interstates 5 and 15. In 1989, the stretch between College Boulevard and El Camino Real carried an average of 120,000 vehicles a day.

Ed FitzGibbon, Caltrans manager for the new project, said traffic will be affected by the construction for nine months, but at least two lanes each way will be kept open during commuting periods.

FitzGibbon said another section of freeway reconstruction--extending from Melrose Drive in Vista to San Marcos Boulevard in San Marcos--is ending this week, although only four lanes of the new pavement will be open to traffic until bridge widening is completed at San Marcos Boulevard, Melrose Drive, Smilax Road and Sycamore Avenue. Work on the bridge-widening projects is scheduled for the spring.

Caltrans spokesman Jim Larson said flooding occurred along California 78 during the rainy years that started in the late 1970s, flooding parts of the road with overflow from Buena Vista Creek and Buena Vista Lagoon.

He said the flooding occurred “not so much from heavy rains but from increased runoff because of the increasing development, urbanization of the areas around the freeway.”

The entire $38.8-million project, which will result in a six-lane freeway with ample auxiliary lanes to handle merging traffic, is to be completed in early 1993.