Getting Mixed Signals? Call Caltrans

Dear Street Smart:

What’s the easiest way to let Caltrans know about confusing signs? The northbound Interstate 5 onramp from westbound Oso Parkway had the carpool lane switched from right to left, but the signs haven’t changed. Plus there’s a sign on the northbound Interstate 5 between Alicia Parkway and El Toro Road claiming the right lane is for the 5 Truck Bypass, but that lane must exit at El Toro Road.

Chris Schlieter

Mission Viejo

The easiest way to report confusing signage is to call the agency’s public information office at (714) 724-2341.

Regarding the signs you mention, Caltrans spokeswoman Pam Gorniak says the agency is aware of them and will correct both problems soon. The mixed-up carpool signs at Oso Parkway were scheduled to have been covered last week and will be removed this week, Gorniak said. Eventually, the pavement will be restriped to remove the carpool lane entirely.

As for the errant truck bypass sign, Gorniak said, it too was covered last week and will be removed within a month. “They just got it in the wrong spot,” she said.

Dear Street Smart:

I am concerned about the delay in the completion of Bison Avenue, east of MacArthur Boulevard, across the San Joaquin Hills toll road. I am informed by an engineer in the Irvine Public Works Department that the city is doing the work for the tollway. The road is graded, and grading machines have been parked on it for months.

Although the 900-foot road appears to have no significant alignment or grading problems, it has been “under design since September” (why not earlier?), and no contract will apparently be let until June or July.

Is this scheduling and delay the norm?

George J. Jeffries

Newport Beach

The delay is the result of scheduling and funding obstacles, according to Kia Mortazavi, a city engineer. To begin with, he said, work on the Bison overpass could not begin before the toll road was completed in November. “We couldn’t start on the project while the tollway was under construction because they were trying to build in the same place that we would be building,” Mortazavi said. “We would have been in each other’s way.”

In addition, he said, the project requires the relocation of utility lines that feed the nearby campus of UC Irvine, which can do without power only one time per year--during the Thanksgiving weekend when the campus is nearly deserted. As a result, Mortazavi said, the project must be timed so the utility switch-over takes place then.

And the reason no contract will be issued until summer, he said, is to allow time to “come to terms” with the funding of the $1.4-million project, which will be paid for entirely by the Irvine Co. and UCI.

If everything works out, the engineer said, the Bison overpass should be open by early next year.

Dear Street Smart:

I’m wondering when Caltrans is going to finish up the last step in the earthquake retrofit activity that has been underway on the San Diego Freeway northbound transition to the Costa Mesa Freeway south.

Caltrans closed a lane in the transition with concrete barricades to protect a crane. They also restriped the approach to the transition and closed a lane with a yellow striped inside border. The crane is gone, the barricades have been gone for months, but the yellow paint is still there making the lane unusable. It impedes traffic flow on the transition and leading up to the transition.

The crunch area where the Jamboree onramp, the MacArthur onramp and the Costa Mesa transition traffic meet on the San Diego flows much worse because of this closed lane. The barricades have been gone since the first of the year. When is Caltrans planning on restriping to the original configuration?

David O’Shea

Costa Mesa

December 31. That’s the date the retrofitting will be completed and the yellow lines removed, said Maureena Duran-Rojas of Caltrans.

As to why the crane was removed early: “They finished doing the pile driving and once they were finished they could move the crane into another area,” Duran-Rojas said. “But they are still doing some work on the shoulder.”