Road Congestion Relief on Way Via 21 ‘Super Streets’

‘The traffic along here is always bad. It doesn’t matter what time of the day you drive it. And it’s getting worse.’

--John Moody,an El Toro Road driver for 10 years

Pharmacist Charles Mee used to fill 90 prescriptions every Saturday. In the last year, however, the owner of the Right Price drugstore in El Toro says, he’s been lucky to handle half that many.

“On Saturdays, the traffic’s backed up so much on El Toro Road that I’ve lost a lot of customers because they can’t get in or out of the parking lot,” Mee said.

Elizabeth Bock of Brea uses Harbor Boulevard to get around north Orange County, an experience she describes as increasingly frustrating.

“On Harbor, it seems like you’ve got to stop at every light,” said Bock, a 34-year-old piano teacher. “I used to live in the San Fernando Valley, where you could catch the lights and drive clear across the valley without stopping. Why can’t they do something to straighten out the lights here in Orange County?”

Mee and Bock are just two of the thousands of motorists whose complaints about driving in Orange County have nothing to do with the region’s notoriously jammed freeways. They spend much of their time on the county’s increasingly congested surface streets.

Now, in response to a growing number complaints from motorists and businessmen--who say that these streets not only are a time-consuming inconvenience but also have become a threat to their lives and livelihoods--the Orange County Transportation Commission is gradually implementing a “super streets” program to turn El Toro Road and Harbor Boulevard, along with 19 other major county thoroughfares, into smooth-flowing roads.

While relief is at least a year away, under the super-street proposal, traffic signals would be synchronized, right- and left-hand turn lanes would be added at intersections, street parking would be curtailed or eliminated to allow for more lanes, and bus turn-outs would be built.

“We’re not saying that you could drive non-stop from Costa Mesa to La Habra on Harbor Boulevard,” said Lisa Mills, the super-street coordinator. But Mills, who also is OCTC’s manager of planning and programming, envisions that someday, “platoons” of cars and trucks will be able to move non-stop through several traffic signals, perhaps for miles.

Improved intersections are a key goal of the super-street program.

“Intersections are what limit traffic capacity, not the rest of the street,” said Bill Weldele, chief traffic designer for the California Department of Transportation. Weldele is working with the OCTC on a $4-million plan to turn Beach Boulevard, a state road, into the county’s first super street.

“At the intersection, you have to split time between two streets, and that’s why bottlenecks happen,” Weldele said. “If you can add more lanes at the intersection, such as a right-hand turn lane and two left-hand turn lanes, you can allow more traffic to move through the intersection on the green light.”

The super-street plan moved a step closer to countywide implementation when the OCTC voted last month to spend $75,000 during the coming year to explore the feasibility of signal synchronization along the 220-mile super-street network.

The 21 roadways that would make up the network are: Adams Avenue, Beach Boulevard, Bolsa Avenue, Bolsa Chica Road, Crown Valley Parkway, El Toro Road, Fair Drive, Harbor Boulevard, Imperial Highway, Irvine Boulevard, Jamboree Road, Katella Avenue, Laguna Canyon Road, Moulton Parkway, Newport Boulevard, Orangethorpe Avenue, Pacific Coast Highway, State College Boulevard, Tustin Avenue, Valley View Street and Warner Avenue.

Upgrading Needed

Harbor Boulevard in north Orange County and El Toro Road in the south county are two thoroughfares in particular that could benefit by being upgraded to super streets, Mills said.

El Toro Road stretches 11.5 miles from Laguna Beach through Laguna Hills and El Toro and ends at Santiago Canyon Road. It is the major connecting road to the Santa Margarita Parkway, which is the gateway to the fast-growing planned communities of Rancho Santa Margarita and Coto de Caza, Mills said.

In the last 10 years, the number of cars and trucks on El Toro Road has nearly doubled, jumping from 35,000 to 56,000 a day, according to figures compiled by the Orange County traffic engineering department. “Everybody living around there uses it to get on and off I-5,” OCTC’s Mills said.

But a reporter who conducted interviews along El Toro Road found mixed reactions to proposals that traffic be speeded up.

Not surprisingly, most drivers favored any improvements that would allow them to drive the route in less time. But merchants along the route said heavy traffic was good for business and were reluctant to support any changes that would decrease the number of customers patronizing their stores.

“The traffic along here is always bad,” said John Moody, a 29-year-old Mission Viejo salesman who has driven regularly along El Toro Road for over a decade. “It doesn’t matter what time of the day you drive it. And it’s getting worse.”

Stan Grekowicz, a 37-year-old computer salesman who drives along El Toro Road a couple of times a day, said that in the last year he has witnessed four serious accidents, usually caused by motorists cutting off cars or speeding through intersections after the traffic signal has changed.

“Once this guy was hurt so bad that they had to bring in a helicopter to take him to the hospital,” Grekowicz said.

He was surprised to hear that traffic signals along El Toro Road already are synchronized.

“I’m originally from Chicago, and you can go 25 to 30 miles per hour, and you’ll make all the lights, even in rush hour,” Grekowicz said. “Three weeks ago, I was back in Chicago and in rush hour, I was able to drive from downtown to the West Side--20 miles--in 35 minutes. Here it would have taken me 1 1/2 hours to go that far.”

On the other hand, Jim Hester, who has been the El Toro branch manager of Home Savings for 10 years, said he has mixed feelings about traffic. “I’ve heard that 57,000 cars a day pass by our front door, and that’s good and bad.

“It’s good because we’re in an area where we can serve a lot of people, and all businesses want to be in an area where there’s a lot of traffic,” Hester said. “But it’s difficult to deal with a lot of things, like the congestion and the occasional accidents.”

Hester said he did not believe that much could be done to improve traffic flow on El Toro Road.

“They’ve redesigned the intersection (at Rockfield Boulevard) and (synchronized) the lights. We’ve got three lanes of traffic going both ways. Entering and leaving the parking lot sometimes is kind of tight for customers, but they’ve gotten accustomed to that.”

Even more enthusiastic in their belief that streets clogged with traffic are a boon to business were most merchants whose stores fronted Harbor Boulevard in downtown Fullerton near Chapman Avenue, which is generally considered one of the most congested intersections in the county.

“The more cars there are, the more people will see that we are here,” said Bill Michael, manager of Sterling Optical. “Our business is continually getting better, and I attribute that to the fact that Harbor is well-traveled.”

Dick Virginia, manager of Mo’s Fullerton Music Center, said: “During rush hour, things are backed up a bit, but you can still get through this part of town in about five minutes. Sure, there are a couple of streets where you can make left-hand turns without having a left-hand turn lane, and that causes traffic to back up and some accidents.”

But Virginia, who has managed the music-equipment store for three years, said these problems pale in comparison with the benefits. “Having all this traffic is beautiful because we have unique window displays; people sitting at lights notice them and decide to come in.”

Regis Vogel, manager of the Vision Art gift shop, said, “Traffic’s always slow or at a dead stop (on Harbor Boulevard), which is good because it gives people a chance to see our display windows.”

Steve Rajcic, owner of CM School Supply, said: “In business you want as much traffic to pass by your store as possible. It’s good for business when traffic comes to a dead stop, because people can see what we have in the store.”

A minority of businessmen, however, said traffic has become so snarled on El Toro Road and Harbor Boulevard that it’s keeping customers away.

El Toro Road Overpasses

Yervant Gulsatarian said he is so frustrated by the traffic signals on El Toro Road that he’d like to see overpasses built. “There are too many lights and you have to wait too long because there are too many cross streets,” said Gulsatarian, who operates the Saddleback Cleaners.

Gulsatarian said his 5-year-old business is suffering because of the traffic congestion. “A lot of my old customers have stopped bringing their clothes here. They’re going to cleaners that are near them, even when the cleaners don’t do a good job, because it sometimes takes them an hour to get here.”

Lisa Hackin, manager of the Birkenstock natural footwear store in Fullerton, also said traffic along Harbor Boulevard was driving away customers. “There’s no left-hand turn lane on Harbor, and if you try to turn left, you can wait through five lights before you can make it,” Hackin said.

To make the super-street improvements a reality, however, the OCTC needs the cooperation of Orange County’s cities, along with the county and state governments, super-street coordinator Mills readily acknowledges.

Orange County is responsible for maintaining El Toro Road, with the exception of a small section adjacent to I-5, which falls under the jurisdiction of Caltrans.

County traffic engineer Steve Hogan said he supports the super-street plan and believes that El Toro Road could benefit from widening some intersections. But he doubted whether other super-street improvements could do much to help traffic flow more smoothly on El Toro Road.

“The traffic signals along El Toro are already coordinated, though a lot of people don’t believe it,” Hogan said. “El Toro’s problems are beyond what (signal) coordination alone will handle. The best thing that can be done for El Toro is to give people another way to get to and from I-5. If the San Joaquin and Foothill corridors were built, that would help a lot, because people would have other ways to get in and out of the area.”

Implementing the super-street program along Harbor Boulevard, Mills noted, will require the cooperation of eight different jurisdictions: Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Anaheim, Fullerton, La Habra, Orange County and the state.

“Many of these cities have different (traffic signal) equipment that can’t talk to each other,” Mills said. “So the signals in Garden Grove don’t know what the signals in Anaheim are doing. And even where they have the same equipment, different people in each city are playing with how the signals are timed.”

Another reason that traffic signals are not synchronized, Mills said, is that jurisdictions have different priorities for various roads. “Caltrans coordinates the signals near freeways so the traffic could be moving well on freeways, but at the expense of delaying traffic on surface streets,” Mills said.

“And Garden Grove could think that the traffic is heavier on Harbor, so that’s their priority. But you get up to Anaheim, and they might give higher priority to Katella to the detriment of Harbor.”

Traffic engineers for the eight different jurisdictions fronting Harbor Boulevard said they supported the super-street proposal in principle. But Caltrans’ Weldele noted that Harbor Boulevard at various locations is bisected by the San Diego, Garden Grove and Riverside freeways and that the adjacent traffic signals are operated by the state.

“Where a state highway intersects with local streets,” Weldele said, “in general we attempt to work out the most efficient traffic flow plan. But if there is a direct conflict between the traffic movement on the state highway and a local street, the state highway has to take priority.”

SUPER STREET

The Orange County Transportation Commission will be implementing a “Super streets” program to transform 21 major county thoroughfares into smooth flowing roadways.

Under the proposal: Traffic signals would be synchronized. Right and left-hand turn lanes would be added at intersections. Street parking would be curtailed or eliminated for allow for more lanes. Bus turnouts would be built.

HARBOR BOULEVARD TRAFFIC FLOW 1976-86

Between the Imperial Highway and the Route 55 freeway (extended):

Average vehicles per intersection per day : 1976 (33 intersections): 3,360 1986 (37 intersections): 3,600

PROPOSED SUPER STREETS 1. Imperial Highway between Beach and Yorba Linda boulevards. 2. Harbor Boulevard between Imperial Highway and Newport Boulevard. 3. State College Boulevard between the 91 Freeway and Imperial Highway. 4. Orangethorpe Avenue between Beach Boulevard and Imperial Highway. 5. Tustin Avenue/Rose Drive between the 91 Freeway and the Imperial Highway. 6. Katella Avenue between Beach Boulevard and the I-605. 7. Valley View Street between the 22 and 91 freeways. 8. Bolsa Chica Road between Warner Avenue and I-405. 9. Bolsa Avenue/First Street between Bolsa Chica Road and I-5. 10. Warner Avenue between I-405 and Harbor Boulevard. 11. Beach Boulevard between Pacific Coast and Imperial Highways. 12. Adams Avenue between Beach and Harbor boulevards. 13. Fair Drive/University Avenue (proposed extension) between Harbor and MacArthur boulevards. 14. Jamboree/Myford Roads between I-5 and the 73 Freeway. 15. Irvine Boulevard/Fourth Street between the 55 Freeway and El Toro Road. 16. Newport Boulevard between Pacific Coast Highway and the San Joaquin Transportation Center. 17. El Toro Road between Laguna Canyon Road and the Foothill Transportation Corridor. 18. Moulton Parkway/Irvine Center Drive/Street of the Golden Lantern between the 55 Freeway and Pacific Coast Highway. 19. Pacific Coast Highway between Warner Avenue and I-5. 20. Laguna Canyon Road between the southern terminus of the 133 Freeway and Pacific Coast Highway. 21. Crown Valley Parkway between Pacific Coast Highway and the Foothill Transportation Corridor.