CONSTRUCTION STARTS ON 55/NEWPORT BLVD WIDENING
The stop-gap measure of widening Newport Blvd. to ease traffic congestion where the 55 Freeway suddenly and absurdly becomes Newport Blvd. has begun.
Most of the construction is slated to take place at night to prevent as much disruption as possible for the few shoppers who still venture into that mess that the State of California has put in our city.
While we have our fingers crossed that the widening will do some good, we're afraid that during high traffic days--say in the summer months--few motorists baking in their cars at the bottleneck at the end of the 55 near 19th Street will even realize that the street was widened at all.
The truth is that Costa Mesa sits on the trail between a massive herd of water starved inlanders and the watering hole of the Pacific Ocean.
Until the 55 is put underground, that herd is going to keep trying to shove through the bottleneck.
"If you build it, they will come," may be as true about this widening project as it was about the baseball field in the movie Field of Dreams.
Once word gets back to the rest of the herd that the street has been widened, more will come--thinking they'll get through the bottleneck faster. They won't.
Notwithstanding the above, something had to be done about the bottleneck.
Widening the street a little may at least raise the consciousness of state politicians that it's not acceptable to build half a freeway and end it in the middle of a city.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
