COSTA MESA UNPLUGGED:Hawkins spews clever untruths

That Bob Hawkins is a crafty fella.

Hawkins, a Newport Beach planning commissioner, penned a clever bit of disinformation in the Daily Pilot (“Banning Ranch won’t use 19th Street bridge,” July 31), reassuring Costa Mesa that “it is not Banning Ranch which will use the 19th Street bridge.”

Hawkins wanted Goat Hillers to know this in response to an earlier Daily Pilot essay by Geoff West.

West had opined that Newport Beach needed to mitigate the traffic-generation impacts of any future Banning Ranch development on its own turf.

Harbor Town, West wrote, is banking on a bridge spanning the Santa Ana River Channel at 19th Street as one solution to the daily car conga that will spill from any Banning Ranch development, whether it’s the 1,375-unit community envisioned in the Newport Beach General Plan or the much larger residential enclave the County of Orange has already approved.

The bridge is currently part of the Orange County Transportation Authority’s master plan of highways, a forward-looking blueprint of future roads, highways and bridges.

Costa Mesa hates the prospect of the thing, fearing it will spawn a flood of Huntington Beach traffic sniffing out easy access to the 55.

Surf City doesn’t like it much either, and for much the same reason it turns Costa Mesa’s stomach.

Now, were it not for the gradoo floating about in Hawkins’ word punch, our Newport-envy might have lulled us into drinking his Kool-Aid.

Costa Mesa shouldn’t worry about the potential traffic impacts of Banning Ranch development, Hawkins urged.

That’s because Newport Beach’s newly polished General Plan provides for two new routes in and out of Banning Ranch at Pacific Coast Highway. And, indeed it does.

The first extends 15th Street at Monrovia west into the Banning Ranch property. The route then bends south to Pacific Coast Highway.

The second is a planned north-south thoroughfare called Bluff Road.

It’s to be located on the western portion of Banning Ranch and will also link up with Pacific Coast Highway.

Nice, on its face, that Newport Beach is willing to plant a pair of new signalized intersections on Pacific Coast Highway.

But what Hawkins forgot to mention — conveniently — is that the 15th Street link still provides an eastbound outlet to Placentia Avenue and Newport Boulevard, and those are two of the three northern routes to the 55 right through the gut of Costa Mesa.

Now, if you’re a freeway-seeking denizen of the Banning Ranch neighborhood, which would you prefer? Trundling on down to Pacific Coast Highway then over to either Newport Boulevard or Brookhurst Street, or shooting over to Placentia Avenue or Newport Boulevard to catch the freeways?

Even the half-brained can decipher that one in a nanosecond.

Then there’s the odor from Hawkins’ Bluff Road dropping that really tears the eyes. That’s because the commissioner left out the part about the road’s extension to the north, where it links up with (can you guess?) 19th Street.

And as currently envisioned in the Newport Beach General Plan, the Bluff Road/19th Street intersection can only occur if 19th Street is extended west from Balboa Avenue, an extension that’s vital to the 19th Street bridge plan.

Let’s noodle on the path of least resistance on that one.

You can get to the freeways by scooting south on Bluff Road to PCH, then over to Newport Boulevard or Brookhurst. Sure.

Or, you can fire on up Bluff Road to 19th Street, then east to the 55 or west across the new bridge to Brookhurst and eventually the 405.

Give Hawkins his due. He’s protecting the interests of his constituency, and that’s fine.

But he shouldn’t play Costa Mesans for idiots in the process.