Orange County, California transportation officials want to widen the 405 to reduce travel times and ease predicted congestion. The cities of Seal Beach and Long Beach are concerned about how that will impact traffic on surface streets.
Erika Aquilar reports on the latest news in an ongoing legal battle between the state of California and two cities in Southern California. The cities of Long Beach and Seal Beach sued the California Department of Transportation in 2015 "over plans to add one toll lane and one free lane to the 405 between State Route 73 in Costa Mesa and the 605 Freeway near the Los Angeles County line. The proposal also calls for converting the existing carpool lane into a toll lane."
The cities are concerned that the new freeway capacity will spill new traffic onto their surface streets, so "they want Caltrans and the Orange County Transportation Authority to pay for more traffic congestion solutions on city surface streets," according to Aguilar.
The cities believe that if Caltrans widens the final stretch of I-405 in Orange County, the additional traffic will spill onto surface streets when it hits a bottleneck at the Los Angeles County line. Orange County Transportation Authority is pitching the project as needed congestion relief.
Drive times on the 405 between SR-73 and the 605 are projected to take more than an hour by the year 2040 but, according to the OCTA, with the additional free lane, that commute could be cut in half; and up to 13 minutes if a driver chooses to pay for the toll lanes.
Aguilar also covered the controversy before Long Beach took legal action in 2015.
FULL STORY: Legal fight over the 405 expansion in Orange County moves to San Diego
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