Crush relief may be freeway away

Deirdre Newman

A county agency is looking to alleviate the notoriously nightmarish

“Orange Crush,” with early options that include extending the Orange

Freeway south through the Mesa Verde neighborhood in Costa Mesa.

The Orange County Transportation Authority, an agency with a board

that includes several elected representatives from all over the

county, has begun a study to explore options to improve travel in

central Orange County. Officials are asking the public to weigh in on

these options. While the options include increasing bus and rail

service, and making improvements to surface streets, the option to

extend the Orange Freeway is taking center stage, officials said.

The main proposal is to extend the Orange Freeway to the San Diego

Freeway, but an alternative also being explored is to extend it to

the Corona del Mar Freeway, which would put freeway lanes through the

mostly residential Mesa Verde area. City officials don’t want the

Orange Freeway coming farther south than the San Diego Freeway,

Transportation Services Manager Peter Naghavi said.

Residents, like former Mayor Sandra Genis,, go even further by

rejecting an extension of the freeway altogether. Genis said she

would prefer the agency use the concept of “super streets” -- making

major thoroughfares run as smoothly as possible with bus turnouts

and synchronized traffic signals.

“By accommodating bad planning by building ever more freeways and

what not, we’ll basically encourage bad planning,” Genis said. “It’s

sort of like if every time you bought something and someone kept

building you more closets, you’d never clean your house.”

The Central County Corridor study started this month and examines

the area bordered by Katella Avenue on the north, the Costa Mesa

Freeway on the east, Adams Avenue and Wilson Street on the south, and

Beach and Harbor Boulevards on the west. Several partner cities are

involved with the study, including Costa Mesa and Newport Beach.

The agency is conducting the study based on what officials see as

the need to enhance travel within central and coastal Orange County,

and to bolster the economic vitality of these communities, as well as

outlying areas. The option to extend the Orange Freeway is being

explored because currently there isn’t any direct freeway access

from the central part of the county to the western part ,

transportation agency spokesman Michael Litschi said.

This is not the first time the Orange Freeway extension has been

explored. As far back as 1982, the first study looking at extending

the freeway to the San Diego Freeway was funded by the Orange County

Transportation Commission, which evolved into the authority.

In August, the transportation authority did a traffic-modeling

study exploring an extension of the Orange Freeway. The study showed

that if the extension connected with both the San Diego Freeway and

the Corona del Mar Freeway, it would carry between 111,000 and

148,000 trips a day by 2025. And if it connected with just the San

Diego Freeway, it would carry between 90,000 and 130,000 trips a day

by 2025, Litschi said.

Naghavi, who is on the transportation agency’s technical advisory

committee, extending the Orange Freeway to the San Diego Freeway to

deal with traffic makes sense.

“We do need to plan for the future,” Naghavi said. “Just imagine

15 to 20 years down the road.”

A public survey is part of the study and includes a question about

extending the Orange Freeway all the way to Pacific Coast Highway.

The study is anticipated to be completed in six months, and the

agency’s board of directors is expected to receive the

recommendations in January.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.