Harbor Town, West wrote, is banking on a bridge spanning the Santa Ana River Channel at 19th Street as one solution to the daily car conga that will spill from any Banning Ranch development, whether it's the 1,375-unit community envisioned in the Newport Beach General Plan or the much larger residential enclave the County of Orange has already approved.
The bridge is currently part of the Orange County Transportation Authority's master plan of highways, a forward-looking blueprint of future roads, highways and bridges.
Costa Mesa hates the prospect of the thing, fearing it will spawn a flood of Huntington Beach traffic sniffing out easy access to the 55.
Surf City doesn't like it much either, and for much the same reason it turns Costa Mesa's stomach.
Now, were it not for the gradoo floating about in Hawkins' word punch, our Newport-envy might have lulled us into drinking his Kool-Aid.
Costa Mesa shouldn't worry about the potential traffic impacts of Banning Ranch development, Hawkins urged.
That's because Newport Beach's newly polished General Plan provides for two new routes in and out of Banning Ranch at Pacific Coast Highway. And, indeed it does.
The first extends 15th Street at Monrovia west into the Banning Ranch property. The route then bends south to Pacific Coast Highway.
The second is a planned north-south thoroughfare called Bluff Road.
It's to be located on the western portion of Banning Ranch and will also link up with Pacific Coast Highway.
Nice, on its face, that Newport Beach is willing to plant a pair of new signalized intersections on Pacific Coast Highway.
But what Hawkins forgot to mention — conveniently — is that the 15th Street link still provides an eastbound outlet to Placentia Avenue and Newport Boulevard, and those are two of the three northern routes to the 55 right through the gut of Costa Mesa.
