EDITORIAL

It’s time for Newport Beach to act like a good neighbor. Officials and

residents in Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach want the county to remove a

planned bridge over the Santa Ana River between 19th Street in Costa Mesa

and Banning Avenue in Huntington Beach, as well as one at Gisler Avenue.

They worry about the added traffic and noise the bridges would bring to

both sides of the river.

Newport Beach officials, however, see it differently. More routes over

the river would alleviate congestion on Coast Highway, which is

understandably something they would want.

But Newport Beach residents are not the ones who will be most affected

by a bridge at 19th Street. It is the people living around 19th Street in

Costa Mesa and around Banning in Huntington Beach who have the most to

lose and, by their estimations, nothing to gain by the construction of a

bridge there.

In the past weeks, the county has been taking comments on a study of

the proposed bridges. The local meetings have been dominated by residents

demanding the bridges be taken off the county’s arterial highways master

plan.

The trouble is, officials from all four cities in the area -- Costa

Mesa, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Fountain Valley -- must agree

on what to do. And Newport Beach leaders haven’t budged on their

insistence that the bridges remain as a potential solution, in their

minds, to the crowded Coast Highway. (Fountain Valley officials

historically have been neutral in the debate and have signaled that they

would vote for the bridges’ removal.)

It is time they do. It is clear that the bridge is not wanted, and it

should not be forced on Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach residents.

Certainly, the few arguments made that a bridge would benefit those

living in the Westside don’t in any way offset the obvious problems the

bridges would cause.

According to the county’s study of the bridges, removing them would

increase traffic, but not beyond levels that could be handled with

increased turn lanes, signals or additional lanes. It is time for the

four cities involved to begin working on how to improve traffic through

those methods and relegate the bridges to where they belong: the trash

bin.