Paving the Way for Transportation

The State Route 91 freeway completes Orange County, Calif.'s first American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project with a $65 million lane addition and widening.

By Carina Calhoun Photography courtesy of Orange County Transportation Authority

A major transportation artery connecting Orange County, Calif., with Riverside County, Calif., with a chronic congestion reputation has been relieved with the addition of a lane six miles long on the eastbound State Route (SR) 91. The $65 million project was the first American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) transportation project in Orange County and was funded primarily — $47.9 million — by the ARRA. Being the first of several projects to ease congestion on the freeway, the lane addition marks a significant component to the overall improvements over key stretches of SR-91.

Construction began in November 2009, with most funding coming from the ARRA and including $12 million from the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) and $5 million from the Riverside County Transportation Commission (RCTC). According to Will Kempton, chief executive officer of Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), this project is the first in a series for planned construction, which is the centerpiece of the Measure M2 Program — the half-cent sales tax in Orange County for transportation improvements. OCTA, California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and RCTC developed the 91 Implementation Plan, a multipleyear and multimillion strategic plan to improve SR-91 throughout Orange and Riverside Counties.

The project was finished in just over a year, with completion in December 2010. Brutoco Engineering & Construction Inc. worked as the general contractor responsible for construction of the project. Michael Murphy, president of Brutoco, commented on the challenge of making a commitment to complete the project in such a short time frame. "The partnering approach to building the project that was utilized by Brutoco, Caltrans and OCTA kept everyone focused and on our goal — completing the project on time and under budget," he said.

With about 584 new employees, including Brutoco and its subcontractors, who expended approximately 209,000 labor hours, there were as many as 150 men and women working onsite at the peak of the project in addition to the many others hired for shorter periods to perform specialized portions of the work, according to Murphy. The freeway remained fully open during peak hours, with off-peak construction and periodic lane closures on this stretch of the SR-91 between State Route 241 in Orange County and State Route 71 in Riverside County. The daily traffic volume on this section can reach nearly 300,000 vehicles, according to Caltrans.

With such a high number of vehicles on the road daily, the engineering and organization of the project took some thorough consideration. Son Nguyen, senior transportation engineer at Caltrans working as design branch chief on the project, explained, "One design challenge involved keeping all lanes open during construction of the eastbound freeway widening with limited available space due to the steep hillsides adjacent to the freeway." The way these challenges were met involved performing surveys and traffic analyses to understand the delay impacts to the commuters and mitigation methods to relieve delays. Once the surveys were complete and the delay impacts analyzed, construction staging plans and traffic management plans — including detour plans and lane closure charts — were developed to help minimize the delays to motorists as much as possible.

"Another design challenge involved widening into the steep hillsides to the south of the freeway," Nguyen said. The surrounding landscape was a significant consideration when planning the design of the infrastructure. Top retaining walls over 40 feet high had to be constructed using a top-down construction method with soil nails to retain the steep hillsides, according to the Caltrans design branch chief.

Environmental surveys were also conducted during the design and construction phases to determine sensitive plant and animal species that had to be protected or replanted during construction. Nguyen stated, "Plans and specifications were developed during the design phase and included in the contract documents to ensure the highway contractor would not violate state or federal environmental requirements." Project Manager Tom Hardin of Eco-Logic Inc., who performed the landscaping on the project, said, "The only challenge was getting the right plants and trees for this project because they had to be grown within a certain parameter." The landscaping portion of the project took about four weeks to complete, including the restoration of the area and planting native plants and trees.

As well as adding the six-mile lane in the eastbound direction, this project also included restripping all the eastbound lanes to standard widths and constructed the shoulder width to 12 feet. Also, five bridges were widened on this project to accommodate the freeway widening, and new cables were installed along the shoulder to service the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras and electrical equipment.

A project spanning two counties through multiple cities without a doubt involved multiple jurisdictions and agencies such as: OCTA; RCTC; Caltrans District 8 and District 12; 91 Express Lanes; Transportation Corridor Agencies; city of Corona; city of Chino Hills; city of Anaheim; and the city of Yorba Linda. Successfully completing the project required an extensive community outreach and government outreach program, according to Kempton. He explained, "These efforts started early in the development phases of the project and continued throughout the life of project construction."

Overcoming challenges and incorporating extensively studied methods and including the various parties involved, the project achieved the goals of the 2008 ARRA by creating jobs and improving the nation's infrastructure.

This project demonstrates a positive example of various agencies coming together to perform an extensive task in such a short period of time and will welcome relief to thousands of people who travel on the freeway each day. Kempton said, "This lane addition on the Riverside Freeway was Orange County's first major stimulusfunded infrastructure project, and through the joint federal, state and local partnership, it was successfully finished in just over a year." He continued, "This project is an excellent example of how multiple agencies can join together to improve our transportation system, and at the same time, provide much needed jobs to the construction sector." The eastbound lane addition on SR-91 has helped reduce a bottleneck where the SR-91 and SR-241 merge and has improved traffic on one of the busiest freeways in the region.

Carina Calhoun is the assistant editor of American Infrastructure. She may be contacted at ccalhoun@penpubinc.com.

Dr. Homaira Akbari is the president and chief executive officer of SkyBitz Inc., a leading remote asset tracking and information management service provider located just outside Washintgon, D.C. She may be contacted at hakbari@skybitz.com.