Costa Mesa will consider bridge proposal

Deirdre Newman

City officials desperately want two long-planned bridges deleted from

a county master plan.

To that end, the transportation services division has created a

multi-step plan to serve as a blueprint for eventually getting the

Gisler Avenue and 19th Street bridges removed from the master plan.

Today, the City Council will consider the proposal that could set

the foundation for the Orange County Transportation Authority to

ultimately eliminate the bridges from its master plan of arterial

highways. The proposal suggests measures to alleviate the problems

the bridges would supposedly solve, including intersection

improvements and roadway widenings.

Once all these measures are complete, the goal is for another

study to be conducted. If the measures prove effective, the bridges

would be removed from the master plan.

If the council approves the blueprint, three other cities affected

by the planned bridges -- Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach and

Newport Beach -- would have to support it, as well.

Not all council members support the idea of leaving the bridges on

the master plan for now.

“I am disappointed of the recommendation to leave them on the

master plan,” Councilwoman Libby Cowan said. “But I’m certainly glad

we’re getting something finally in place.”

City officials oppose the bridges because they believe they would

have a severely harmful effect on several nearby residential areas,

schools and parks. They are also concerned that the bridges could

adversely affect the existing wetlands and biological resources along

the Santa Ana River bed.

Considering these effects, the city requested in 1991 that Orange County, which had the authority over the bridges at the time, remove

them from the master plan.

Based on this request, Costa Mesa, working with the county and

Fountain Valley, Newport and Huntington, started the Santa Ana River

Crossings study in 1993. After the initial study was completed, all

the cities adopted resolutions requesting the county continue to

examine the possibility of deleting the bridges from the master plan.

Everything was going fine among the cities until Fountain Valley

requested grant funds from the authority for preliminary and final

design of the Gisler Avenue bridge in December.

In response, the Costa Mesa City Council passed an emergency

resolution to fast-track a solution that would be amenable to all

parties.

The first part of the proposed blueprint is for city officials to

reiterate their opposition to the bridges. Although one of the steps

is keeping the bridges on the plan for now, city officials want all

the affected cities to ignore the construction of the bridges when

making long-term planning studies, developments and land use

assumptions.

Staff examined three alternatives: retain both bridges on the

master plan indefinitely; delete the bridges from the master plan;

and delete the bridges and build two other bridges. The first bridge

would connect Garfield Avenue at its eastern end to the southbound

San Diego Freeway and connect the northbound San Diego Freeway with

Garfield, leaving Gisler Avenue unchanged. The second bridge would

connect 17th Street in Costa Mesa to Brookhurst Street in Huntington

Beach at a point north of Banning Avenue from Bluff Road.