Costa Mesa tepidly backs bridge

Alicia Robinson

The Orange County Transportation Authority gained the city’s blessing

and voted Monday to commission an environmental study and preliminary

design of a bridge linking Gisler Avenue in Costa Mesa with Garfield

Avenue in Fountain Valley.

The transportation agency’s board voted Monday to spend $250,000

on study and design work. Costa Mesa officials have long detested the

plan for a bridge over the Santa Ana River, believing it would make

their city a dumping ground for Fountain Valley’s traffic without

solving congestion problems for anyone.

That position, which led city officials to oppose funding for the

same study in 2003, hasn’t changed, Costa Mesa City Manager Allan

Roeder said. What’s new is that the transportation authority will

head the project rather than Fountain Valley, and the study will be

bound by the same constraints as the earlier Santa Ana River Crossing

study, Roeder said.

That means each of four cities involved -- Costa Mesa, Fountain

Valley, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach -- have to sign off on the

study before the transportation agency could move ahead with any

recommendations.

“We removed our objections so long as we retained a veto in terms

of going the next step, if you will, in terms of doing any kind of

construction,” Roeder said.

Fountain Valley officials are pleased with the approval to study

the bridge, which they believe will provide relief from pass-through

traffic clogging their streets, Public Works Director Bill Ault said.

“This isn’t building the bridge,” Ault said. “Fountain Valley’s

just interested in getting the information and completing the study,

so we can have more information on which to base our decisions.”

The environmental analysis is likely to take about 18 months,

Roeder said. He expects it to support what Costa Mesa has been saying

all along, that smaller-scale traffic improvements such as new

left-turn lanes will make more sense than a multimillion-dollar

bridge that will just move congestion around, he said.

Orange County Supervisor Jim Silva, who is on the transportation

agency’s board, said officials also will look at alternatives to the

bridge in case it doesn’t work.

“We have bottlenecks, and we have to relieve those wherever we

can,” he said. “My feeling is the [environmental report] will come

out and say what Costa Mesa would like for it to say.”