[Orange County] Opinion: San Juan Capistrano finally gives Ortega Highway widening the green light

After years of foot-dragging, the San Juan Capistrano City Council voted 4-1 to support the widening of a 0.9-mile stretch of the Ortega Highway. The reversal on Aug. 15 came two months after an Orange County Grand Jury report blasted the city for its resistance to expanding the two-lane segment of highway. At the very least, we are glad that most council members have finally come around.

“I think it’s not a bad idea at this point,” said Mayor Kerry Ferguson, who, the Register noted, voted in 2016 to cancel the project.

With at least 43,500 vehicles using the highway every day, and more expected with growing populations and thousands of homes added with the Rancho Mission Viejo development, it has been obvious for a long time that the segment of the Ortega Highway in San Juan Capistrano needed to be widened.

In 2011, an agreement was reached between the California Department of Transportation, the city and the Hunt Club Community Association explicitly laying out the aesthetics and the scope of the widening. Caltrans permitted the city to assume the role of lead agency, which proved to be a mistake, as the city proceeded to complicate matters.

After securing millions of dollars in grants from the Orange County Transportation Authority, as well as funding from developers, the council reversed itself in 2014 and sought to oppose the project, pandering to the interests of a few who didn’t want to make it easier to drive through the city. Further reversals followed, prompting the county Board of Supervisors to designate O.C. Public Works as the lead agency in 2016.

This series of events, according to the grand jury, caused an unnecessary delay in the project, held up millions of county funds that could have been used elsewhere, and drove up the estimated costs of the project from between $25 million and $30 million in 2011 to $52 million today.

Alas, despite finally realizing the futility of opposing the inevitable widening, the council disputes the idea that “the delay was unnecessary or that it cost the county millions of dollars” in its official response to the grand jury.

We think the record of the project speaks for itself, and speaks to the folly and high cost of catering to NIMBYs for political convenience.

August 24, 2017

The Orange County Register

By Orange County Register Editorial Board