Signal Isn’t Helping Him Get to the Church on Time

Dear Street Smart:

I am a member of Coast Hills Community Church, off Pursuit in Aliso Viejo. When driving to church Sunday mornings for the 10:30 a.m. service, there is always a line of cars waiting for the left-turn green arrow that allows maybe five or six cars to turn, then a long two- to three-minute wait for the next signal.

Do you think the left-turn signal could be regulated to accommodate the 2,000 to 3,000 members who attend the two services Sunday?

Bill Walkup

Monarch Beach

Did you notice a difference Sunday? Because of your letter, Ignacio Ochoa, the county’s traffic engineer, said he would reset the left-turn timer from 20 to 60 seconds on Sundays.

The signal was timed for conventional traffic flow. But Ochoa said he could easily adjust it to accommodate the members of your church and promised to do so by Sunday.

Dear Street Smart:

On the small stretch of Adams Avenue between Harbor Boulevard and Royal Palm Drive, I have noticed the road is terribly rough and cracked in both directions. Immediately after Royal Palm Drive going west, the road is perfectly smooth again.

I believe this stretch of road was under construction a few months ago. Why is the road still bumpy even after construction?

Sameer Khan

Huntington Beach

Adams Avenue did undergo a complete renovation about a year and a half ago. But the quarter-mile stretch between Royal Palm Drive and Peterson Place was left untouched because it was scheduled to be torn up when the intersection at Adams and Harbor Boulevard was revamped, Public Services Director Bill Morris said. Unfortunately, that project has been late in coming because of money.

Morris said that if he had known the project would be delayed this long, he might have made another decision. The $1.2-million project should begin next summer and be finished by the end of next year, he said.

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The massive reworking of the interchange linking the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways is drawing to a close.

Portions of the interchange have been closed for five years, and construction efforts have hampered drivers’ commutes. But Caltrans officials say the improvements debuting this month will allow the interchange to handle a daily stream of 594,000 drivers.

The single lane connecting the northbound Santa Ana Freeway and southbound Costa Mesa Freeway could be open as early as today. The connector was closed in 1991 to be realigned in the interchange’s new configuration. It is the only cloverleaf loop, and it will be the least congested (only 8,500 cars a day) of the five ramps.

The county’s first transitway, a car-pool-only connector linking the two freeways, is scheduled to open Wednesday. Drivers will be able to change freeways (northbound to northbound and southbound to southbound) without leaving the car-pool lane.

Ultimately, the 4 1/2-mile transit-way will link two of the nation’s busiest interchanges, the Santa Ana-Costa Mesa Freeway link and the nearby convergence of the Garden Grove Freeway with the Santa Ana and Orange freeways.

Drivers can also expect to see other regular car-pool lanes reopen through the interchange as the construction curtails later this month.

Another change: Drivers headed north on the Santa Ana Freeway between Red Hill Avenue and 4th Street will now have four lanes instead of three.

The $161.5 million in improvements to the interchange began five years ago as part of the $1.6-billion widening of Orange County’s portion of the Santa Ana Freeway.