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November 12, 2009
Breaking the Gridlock with New SR 91 Project
We’ve all seen traffic on the eastbound 91 Freeway slow to a crawl for those heading home toward Riverside after a hard day’s work in Orange County. The six mile stretch from the 241 Toll Road in Anaheim Hills to the 71 Freeway in Corona has become one of the region’s most notorious traffic choke points, with more than 300,000 cars and trucks traveling it weekly. To make matters worse, that traffic load, according to Joel Zlotnik of the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), is expected to increase to 425,000 trips a day by 2030. So, the last thing an eastbound commuter wants at the end of the day is to get caught-up in a tangle of brake lights.
All of that will soon change. California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), OCTA and the Riverside County Transportation Commission (RCTC) officials held a groundbreaking ceremony on November 3rd to kick-off a $47.9 million freeway improvement project that will add an additional lane that promises to relieve congestion on that troubled section of the eastbound 91. The project is funded with $47.9 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Riverside and Orange Counties contributed $5 million and $6.6 million, respectively, and Orange County’s share came from tolls on the 91 Express Lanes.
According to Caltrans estimates, the new lane scheduled to open by this time next year will save commuters 15 minutes - making a positive impact on the daily lives of so many. And, there’s more good news. The RCTC plans to extend the toll lanes in each direction from where they end, just east of the 241, to Pierce Street in Riverside, and add one freeway lane in each direction between the 15 and 71 Freeways. Similarly, OCTA hopes to add a westbound lane to the 91 Freeway, between the 57 and I-5 Freeways, and add a lane in both directions to the 91 Freeway, between the 55 Freeway and the 241 toll road.
We have President Dwight D. Eisenhower to thank for the creation of our interstate highway system - a priority of his administration called his “Grand Plan.” In 1956, he signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, also known as the National Highway Defense System (NHDS) - referred to as one of the “Seven Wonders of the United States,” along with the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal. “More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America,” Eisenhower later wrote in 1963. “Its impact on the American economy - the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up - was beyond calculation.”
This six-mile stretch of freeway can hardly compare with Eisenhower’s vision, it is nevertheless a valuable transportation corridor for hundreds of thousands of commercial and freight trucks serving regional and national markets as they arrive inland from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. And, as the largest Orange County transportation project to get funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, it is expected to provide approximately 900 jobs, including construction shifts and indirect employment to suppliers.
My Anaheim City Council colleagues and I have taken a leadership position in addressing transportation needs through the development of the following innovative projects: Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC) project; Anaheim Fixed-Guideway system (linking ARTIC to the Platinum Triangle and the Anaheim Resort Area); and the California High Speed Rail Authority to provide a high-speed train (HST) connection between Southern and Northern California of which ARTIC will be the southern terminus of the Los Angeles-Anaheim segment.
As an elected official, I will continue to support vital infrastructure projects and urge that every dollar collected from taxes on gasoline or auto sales go directly back into construction of more freeway lanes, more roads, and more public transportation alternatives.
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