T-minus six days until big O.C. bottleneck
Big infrastructure fixes often come with a price and such is true of the effort to widen the 5 Freeway in Orange County. Beginning Monday, the Beach Boulevard bridge over the freeway will be closed for three weeks.
The construction, in this case, involves lifting railroad tracks that cross Beach Boulevard from the old bridge to a new one. So, if you use Beach to travel south across the O.C. or to get to or from the 5, the best bet is to steer way clear of the area.
The good news is that the Orange County Transportation Authority's plan to widen the 5 Freeway from the Los Angeles County line south is moving along. When the project is done -- completion is expected in 2010 -- the three lanes of the 5 in each direction will widen to five lanes as soon as the 5 passes from Los Angeles County into Orange County, two miles north of where it widens now. (Here's a link to the project's website).
As for the Los Angeles County stretch, relief could be coming. The sales tax increase that recently won approval from voters in the county is supposed to contribute about $265 million to the $1.24 billion widening of the 5 Freeway between the 605 and the O.C. line, with the state providing the bulk of the money. That project is slated to be finished by 2016.
There's been a lot of hand-wringing on the part of L.A. County officials in the past that the O.C. widening project will create a massive bottleneck at the county line, as opposed to the existing bottleneck -- and that the widening on both sides of the county line should have been done at the same time. I've never understood what the fuss is about -- my best guess is that L.A. County officials don't like the fact that having the 5 widen right at the county line is a reminder to motorists of the officials who are getting the job done in a quicker fashion.
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