Re-Striping to Ease Garden Grove Freeway Transitions

Dear Street Smart:

Now that work is finishing up on the transition from the eastbound Garden Grove Freeway to the northbound Orange Freeway, has Caltrans considered re-striping to help alleviate the bottleneck that develops all day on the Garden Grove Freeway? Specifically, has Caltrans considered making the right lane of the Garden Grove Freeway an exit-only onto Orange Freeway north, and making the middle lane of the Garden Grove Freeway east an optional exit onto the Orange Freeway north?

My experience has been that at least 50% of the cars are currently exiting onto the Orange Freeway north. I understand that the Garden Grove bridge is under construction and will be shifted several times, but I firmly believe the re-striping needs to be done NOW and not when the Garden Grove-Santa Ana-Orange freeways interchange is complete. I am sure many frustrated commuters echo my thoughts on this matter.

John Johnston, Fullerton

Since your letter was written, Caltrans has re-striped the eastbound Garden Grove Freeway in precisely the way you suggested. However, the two-lane connector itself still reduces to one lane before going around the loop of the horseshoe, Caltrans resident engineer Tim Buchannan said. This will be re-striped to give two lanes for the entire connector as soon as work is completed.

In conjunction with the re-striping of the loop, a lane has been added from the westbound Garden Grove Freeway to the northbound Orange Freeway, which will provide two lanes for the eastbound and westbound Garden Grove Freeway traffic making transitions to the northbound Orange Freeway.

Caltrans anticipates the work on this segment of the interchange will be completed in about a month, Buchannan said.

*

Graffiti incidents on Orange County Transportation Authority buses have decreased 40% since April, according to a recently released report by a task force made up of OCTA employees and local law enforcement. That group formed earlier this year after OCTA experienced $1.4 million in vandalism damage during an 18-month period ending December, 1992.

Among the strategies implemented by the task force was use of undercover officers on bus routes where graffiti commonly occurred, additional training for bus drivers, installing graffiti-resistant glass guard inside bus windows and establishing a juvenile offender work program. Later this year, the authority will install video surveillance cameras on selected bus routes with persistent vandalism problems and will increase the installation of bilingual anti-graffiti signs inside buses.