Transportation bill includes ramp plan

Alicia Robinson

A ramp to exit the northbound San Diego (405) Freeway at Susan Street

could be built later this year, once the Senate approves a

$284-billion federal transportation bill the House passed on

Thursday.

In addition to more than $73.6 million for Orange County

transportation projects, the bill includes language to authorize

construction of the ramp. Congressional authority was needed to

override the Federal Highway Administration’s rejection of the

project.

The city of Costa Mesa and Caltrans support the Susan Street ramp,

but the ramp’s most active proponents have been officials with C.J.

Segerstrom & Sons, who pledged the ramp as part of a development

agreement for their Home Ranch project. The development included the

IKEA furniture store and a new headquarters for data storage company

Emulex.

“We fought them for nearly two years administratively,” Segerstrom

spokesman Paul Freeman said of the highway administration. “They kept

raising various objections; we’d go back and redesign it.”

The ramp will start at the collector/distributor lanes leading to

the Fairview Road and Harbor Boulevard exits and end on Susan Street

behind the IKEA store.

Freeman expects it to reduce congestion on the Fairview and Harbor

exits and to give truck traffic a better route that doesn’t pass

residential neighborhoods such as Wimbledon, which is off Fairview

near the freeway.

“It’s certainly going to help with some of the inbound IKEA

traffic,” said Bruce Garlich, a Wimbledon resident and chairman of

the city’s Planning Commission. “It’s definitely going to help; it’s

not going to hurt anything.”

The project has been both lengthy and costly for the Segerstroms,

who are funding it. While the ramp itself will cost less than $1

million, at least $4 million has been spent on environmental studies,

design, lobbying and other related work, Freeman said.

Freeman will head back to Washington, D.C., Monday to meet with

the chairmen of a House/Senate conference committee, which will draft

a compromise integrating what the House approved with a Senate

version of the bill. He wants to get language in the Senate bill that

suggests expediting the project.

The transportation bill could be on President Bush’s desk within

the next two months, Freeman said.