IRVINE : Airport Area Traffic Relief Called Costly

The morning and evening traffic crunches around John Wayne Airport in Irvine can be solved, but the solutions would cost $100 million more than the city expects to receive in transportation funds in the next 20 years, according to city planners.

Wider roads, electronic message signs similar to those on freeways, coordinated traffic signals and more car-pooling would help reduce traffic brought on since the area became a major office center, the planners say. However, they added that the solutions would cost about $250 million over the next 20 years, while the city expects to receive only about $150 million from such sources as developer fees and federal and state highway grants.

How to come up with the extra $100 million will be the topic of a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. today at City Hall.

The likely source is an assessment district to add a property tax for all owners in the Irvine Business Complex, said Seda Yaghoubian, an Irvine planner.

The business complex is an area of offices, industrial buildings and some apartments and condominiums on the east side of the airport. The area stretches along Irvine’s west end, from Newport Beach to the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.

Irvine officials have been looking for a solution to current and projected traffic problems in the Irvine Business Complex for nearly a decade, Yaghoubian said. In 1982, the city rezoned the area around the airport to allow for more offices instead of industrial uses.

After the city rezoned the area, office high-rises starting dotting the landscape, bringing in more workers--and more cars. The city rezoned the land again in 1989 to set a cap on development and began working on new methods to solve the traffic crunch.