Who wants to buy a bridge?

To bridge or not to bridge ... Is that the question? No. First we

need to know where we want to end up, and then we can decide whether

bridges over the Santa Ana River at Gisler Avenue and at West 19th

Street will take us there or to some place we definitely don’t want

to go.

What kind of city do we want Costa Mesa to become? Like Downey,

“where the freeways meet?” Like the cities you pass through on the

freeway on your way to somewhere else: Carson, City of Commerce, City

of Industry, Vernon? Where the grinding of trucks and the din of car

and motorcycle traffic starts at 5:30 in the morning and roars on

until after midnight? Or would you rather live in a place with air

you can breathe and homes you can be at ease in, a place where you

hear children at play in the daytime and the rustling of leaves at

night?

Why are these two bridges still on the county’s Master Plan of

Arterial Highways long after Newport Beach saw to it that the

proposed Coast Freeway and the extension of the Costa Mesa Freeway to

Coast Highway were deleted? Is it because the powers who want to keep

the bridges on the county plan are losing sleep over the

long-suffering commuters stuck in traffic? Hardly.

Having those bridges on the county plan allows neighboring cities,

specifically Newport Beach and Fountain Valley, to develop their

lands to maximum intensity. They can treat those paper bridges in

their environmental reports as though they were real. This allows

them to approve major, high-intensity development projects that they

could not otherwise approve because of their traffic impacts.

As long as the Gisler and West 19th Street bridges remain on the

county plan, higher-intensity development in neighboring cities will

bring more and more regional commuter and truck traffic to Costa

Mesa’s streets, including residential streets. The increased traffic

will eventually force the widening of those streets and increase

pressure to actually construct the bridges.

For example, those paper bridges will allow Newport Beach to

approve major new development while keeping a narrow,

pedestrian-friendly Coast Highway corridor through Mariner’s Mile and

Corona del Mar. Regional traffic could be diverted away from Coast

Highway to drive through the heart of Costa Mesa’s Eastside and

Westside. (Motorists would avoid Coast Highway by using Dover Drive,

then traveling west along East 19th Street, across Newport Boulevard

and then over West 19th Street and the bridge to Brookhurst Street in

Huntington Beach. The return trip would, of course, cover the same

route in reverse.) As a result, residential streets in Costa Mesa’s

Eastside as well as the residential portion of West 19th Street

(Freedom Homes, Newport Terrace and Marina View tracts) from Federal

Avenue westward, would carry the additional regional traffic.

Raise your hand if you think the developers who want the bridges

at Gisler and West 19th are worrying their heads about the plight of

commuters -- Newport Beach and Fountain Valley may have a bridge to

sell you.

ELEANOR EGAN

Costa Mesa

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Eleanor Egan is a former Costa Mesa planning

commissioner.