Re: Fantasy Planning Camp... Oh yeah, the 57 extension was actually a very early project in my second career...
Author: WOW!
Date: 07-27-2024 - 13:08
BOB2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Question for Bob2 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Did you ever work on that proposed Orange
> County
> > riverbed freeway they wanted to build? (Santa
> Ana
> > riverbed between the 405 and 5)
> >
> > I always thought if it was ever actually built,
> it
> > wouldn't last long through our once every ten
> year
> > "storms" that lay waste.
>
> Yep, I sure did, and early on what the demand for
> the extension of the 57 HOV lane that was going to
> be on it. And later, after I'd moved on to toll
> road work, I was asked to find out if we could
> help finance building tolls, like the south OC
> toll roads.
>
> I had watched from the sidelines over the
> intervening years, as folks discovered the real
> costs of building an elevated structure on top of
> a very high water table in earthquake country.
>
> And a few years later, when I had moved on to
> doing road pricing and toll road studies, I was
> asked to find out if "tolls" could help "backfill"
> the huge hole in the estimated construction
> budget.
>
> As toll connectors goes, it performed very poorly,
> duplicates a lot of the demand on the 55, just as
> the HOV lane had performed poorly compared to most
> the HOV lanes we eventually built.
>
> Costs along with the neighbors going nuts over the
> massive intrusive structures, finally gave it the
> death it deserved.
Was that going to be OCTA "funding" that project!?
I always thought if it took 10 years to expand ONE lane of S 405 1/4 a mile in length, it would take a thousand years to build the 57 fiasco! (if that, after they discover the last surviving river snail that would face death if freeway was built)
Not to mention, the 105 needed H20 pumps, the 57 project would have needed SUPER PUMPS!
Happening at that same exact time was all kind of "crayon playing" with extending the Disneyland monorail to Costa Mesa, then becoming the "street car" from Segerstrom to Anaheim ....all perishing in bright flame!