Countywide : Portion of First Transitway Opens to Traffic

A portion of Orange County’s first transitway, a 60-foot-high car-pool lane connecting the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways, opened to commuters Wednesday in Tustin.

The link will channel as many as 23,000 car-pools, buses and motorcycles a day between the two freeways and has already helped alleviate traffic congestion at the nation’s ninth-busiest intersection, officials said.

“This is a major transportation milestone” for Orange County, said Brent Felker, district director for Caltrans.

The transitway differs from other car-pool lanes in that commuters are separated from other traffic, officials said.

It rises 60 feet high in some areas and is sectioned off by concrete barriers with limited access points when it returns to ground level.

Construction began in 1991, and workers have used 189,000 cubic yards of concrete and 13,600 tons of steel to build it.

In a ceremony Wednesday, officials filled a time capsule with such transportation items as a car phone, Auto Club membership card, freeway construction plans, a toll road transponder, a bus system map and a taxi meter. The capsule will later be buried beneath the transitway.

Eventually, the 4 1/2-mile transitway will connect with another of the nation’s busiest intersections, the nearby confluence of the Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Orange freeways, known as the Orange Crush.

Remaining construction of the $172-million project is expected to be completed in mid-1996, Caltrans spokeswoman Maureena Duran Rojas said. The segment that opened Wednesday cost $36.6 million, Rojas said.