City says its way, not the highway

Dave Brooks

Huntington Beach and the Orange County Transportation Authority seem

to be operating on much different time-tables.

While officials with the transportation authority continuously

emphasize that any expansion of the Orange (57) Freeway is years, if

not decades away, Huntington Beach officials have seized the issue,

and joined other Orange County cities to protest plans to possibly

extend the freeway south to the San Diego (405) Freeway or even the

Pacific Coast Highway.

On Monday, Huntington Beach approved a nonbinding resolution

introduced by Councilman Don Hansen opposing the freeway extension.

Costa Mesa has also expressed opposition to the plan, but Monday’s

resolution was significantly symbolic for Hansen, recently elected to

office on a campaign promise to protect the often overlooked

southeastern Huntington Beach neighborhood where he lives with his

wife and two children.

“Residents are concerned that this issue is still on the table and

could have a negative impact of the community,” he said.

The resolution makes Hansen the new local leader in the fight

against the transportation authority’s Central County Corridor Study,

which looks at extending the 57 freeway, along with other traffic

alternatives, as a way to alleviate congestion in mid-Orange County.

The county’s early planners first thought up the idea of

stretching the 57 freeway to Pacific Coast Highway in 1959, and the

state legislature even passed a law mandating the expansion.

In 1991, a construction group led by Ross Perot was given the

franchise rights to extend the 57 freeway 11 miles south to the 405

and operate it as a toll road. That group lost its contract in 2001

for failing to begin construction.

In 2003, County Supervisor Chris Nolby reopened the idea, arguing

that an extension might be needed to handle the county’s growing

population. Orange County is expecting to get 600,000 more residents

by 2030, and the county’s roads aren’t prepared for the growth,

transportation authority official Kurt Brotcke said. The “Orange

Crush” interchange -- where the 57, Garden Grove (22) and Santa Ana

(5) freeways meet -- was recently ranked the 13th most congested in

the nation by the American Highway Users Alliance.

Planners with the transportation authority are now wrapping up the

public input phase of a staggered planning effort to generate

methods, or “alternatives” as the transportation authority calls

them, for alleviating gridlock. In March, the transportation

authority’s board of directors will decide whether to pursue a more

in-depth $1-million study of the project.

Until those environmental reports and cost studies are completed,

likely around mid-2006, transportation staff won’t comment on the

details of the 57 expansion.

What is known is that the extended route would be an elevated

highway running through the Santa Ana River. Huntington Beach city

officials want the plan completely off the drawing board, arguing it

would hurt homes along Brookhurst Street and possibly pollute the

river, which feeds into the Pacific Ocean.

A new freeway would also provide an easy escape route for Surf

City residents to spend their shopping dollars outside of town at

places like South Coast Plaza or Fashion Island, instead of southeast

Huntington Beach’s odd array of dilapidated strip malls and shopping

centers.

“After attending the forums, it’s become glaringly obvious that

the residents of Huntington Beach didn’t want this to go forward,”

Hansen said. “What we can’t do, however, is pretend like we don’t

have traffic issues.”

Huntington Beach sits in the middle of a 15-mile gap with no

north/south freeways to deliver commuters to Anaheim, Santa Ana or

inland counties. Commuters instead are using city roads like

Goldenwest Street, Beach Boulevard and Brookhurst Street as

north/south corridors and are creating gridlock on roads that weren’t

designed for such a high capacity of traffic. Since Huntington Beach

is on the south-most end of Central Orange County, it doesn’t feel as

much effect from a lack of arterial freeways.

Huntington Beach traffic manager Bob Stachelski said extending the

57 would “not likely help local streets significantly, but it does

effect residents and how they move throughout the rest of the

county.”

A freeway extension could also be a golden egg for the

transportation authority, which is already looking at plans to renew

Measure M, set to expire in 2011.

Approved in 1990 on its third try, the half-cent sales tax has

already raised about $2.3 billion and could raise another $2 billion

more by the time it expires. A recent survey commissioned by the

transportation authority found that 71% of voters would support

renewing the initiative if they were shown a list of projects that

would be funded with the money. Absent the list, only 56% of voters

approved -- state law requires the transportation authority to

capture two-thirds of the vote to levy a tax.

Expanding the 57 is also just one of many transportation proposals

being floated by the transportation authority. Planners are also

looking at increasing public transportation availability, adding a

carpool lane on the 5 from the Orange Crush to the 55 freeway or even

widening the 55 freeway.

All these proposals are years out, said the transportation

authority’s Brotcke.

“They’re really decades away,” he said. “Right now there’s not

really any money to do any of it. We’re looking at what we can do by

the year 2030. This is truly long-term planning.”

* DAVE BROOKS covers City Hall. He can be reached at (714)

966-4609 or by e-mail at [email protected].