It’s the First Answer to the Y : Bake Parkway On-Ramp Should Bring Some Relief By Diverting Up to 7,000 Cars From the Interchange

A small band of beaming transportation engineers on Thursday unveiled what they say is the first major milestone in the 18-month-old, $166-million quest to untangle the traffic-glutted El Toro Y freeway interchange.

It’s an on-ramp.

But this is no run-of-the-mill on-ramp.

The 6,700-foot Bake Parkway on-ramp, scheduled to open early this morning, is expected to divert about 6,000 to 7,000 northbound commuters from the Y-shaped confluence of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways in the southeastern corner of Irvine.

Traffic engineers predict that a full one-third of the 20,000-plus daily commuters using Lake Forest Drive to link up with the northbound Santa Ana Freeway will switch to the new route. Those South County commuters will be spared from navigating the hair-raising stretch of freeway that requires them to cross three lanes within one mile to connect with the northbound Santa Ana Freeway.

“We’re going to start seeing immediate relief,” Orange County Transportation Authority project manager Sam Hout said, standing atop the Bake Parkway bridge while workers below busily installed the last freeway signs for the on-ramp’s opening.

Completion of the entire El Toro Y project is expected in summer 1996. Work is being done by OCTA and Caltrans, with funding from Measure M, a half-cent sales tax approved by county voters in 1990 for transportation improvements.

Wall-to-wall traffic during morning, evening and holiday commutes through the El Toro Y has frustrated motorists for years. The solution, Hout says, is a range of Measure M-funded projects, from freeway widening to additional bus routes.

“The freeway is one element, Metrolink is another element,” Hout said. “Construction of local streets and regional roads are another element. That’s the beauty of what Measure M is going to provide for the county.”

Like house-proud homeowners showing off a new recreation room, engineers from the county transportation authority and Caltrans walked the yet unstained, $5.5-million on-ramp Thursday afternoon in anticipation of today’s grand opening. The numbers are still fresh--6,000 tons of asphalt; 5,000 cubic yards of concrete; 250,000 cubic yards of fill dirt; 2 1/2 miles of railing.

What makes the El Toro Y project different from other freeway construction projects is the high level of commuter frustration, according to Saeid Asgari, a Caltrans senior resident engineer.

And 350,000 of those frustrated commuters have continued to drive through the El Toro Y every day during its conversion to a 26-lane freeway interchange, a process engineers liken to “performing open-heart surgery without an anesthetic.”

A handful of construction engineers en route to the site aboard a Caltrans van Thursday swapped a few stories about unusual projects. Like the time they had to build a 12-foot plywood wall about two years ago on Pacific Coast Highway to protect the endangered California least tern from construction noise. And they had to build the wall “quietly.”

Then there was the celery crop. When improvement construction first began on the El Toro Y in November, 1993, acres of celery were maturing in nearby farmlands, just a few weeks away from harvest. The beginning of construction, with its dust and debris, could have meant disaster for the crop, so construction schedules were changed.

“We worked around it,” Caltrans structural supervisor David Niese said.

Commuters who want to use the Bake Parkway on-ramp to reach the northbound San Diego Freeway will have to wait until late August when the additional link is expected to open, according to Caltrans. Southbound exits from the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways to Bake Parkway are scheduled to open in September, with the Bake on-ramp to the southbound Santa Ana Freeway set to open in December.

But commuters looking to reach Irvine Center Drive from the Bake Parkway Bridge are out of luck.

The bridge dead-ends about 700 feet from Irvine Center Drive and is awaiting funding from the city of Irvine, which has already funded part of the El Toro Y project. Funding for the connection was put on hold by the city after the county declared bankruptcy Dec. 6.

“There’s no current schedule for construction,” Irvine acting director of public works Skip Tracy said. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Bypassing the Y A new on-ramp linking westbound Bake Parkway to northbound Santa Ana Freeway opens today the first major improvement in the $166-million El Toro Y project. The connector will divert 6,000 to 7,000 commuters from the Santa Ana/San Diego merge. *

Bake Parkway Lake Forest Drive Northbound Santa Ana Freeway Northbound San Diego Freeway *

Fully Baked Some facts on the new elevated connector: * Cost: $5.5 million * Length: About 1 1/4 miles * Width: 39 to 64 feet * Height: 40 feet at highest point * Concrete: 5,000 cubic yards * Asphalt: 6,000 tons * Fill dirt: 250,000 cubic yards * Construction: About 14 months, minus 54 rain days Source: Caltrans