Capitalist Engineering

Posted on December 17, 2003 in The Orange

The yellow gas pump icon appeared next to the speedometer as we pulled onto the 241 Irvine toll road last night. I had no worries. It meant that we could travel for at least 25 miles at highway speeds before we needed to refill and the Green River offramp where there were stations was only 6 miles away. We topped the road at the toll station and then started our roll towards the 91 freeway. Half a mile beyond the precipitous horizon, we saw the first red lights strung together like cheap beads in the right lanes, the direction we wanted to go. I ended my panic after fifteen seconds and moved out of the right lanes into the left which would take us west, to Yorba Linda where we could certainly fill the tank and then backtrack only a couple of miles to our destination.

Five minutes later, we pulled out at Weir Canyon. There was a 76 Station at the exit, but on the other side of an unbroken concrete divider that ran, as far as I could see, for miles. The road was packed with commuters arriving in their neighborhood a quarter of an hour after six. There was no way to make a left or U-turn to get back to the station for several blocks, so I exited on the right, aiming my truck towards a cluster of stores that we’d passed on the freeway. Surely, I would find a gas station in the place where the stores and restaurants lurked, sucking in consumers hot for holiday deals.

The road blinked in and out of well-lit strip miles for a long quarter of a mile. Signs along the route promised “Auto Concessions” as well as a Best Buy, a Home Depot, and several chain restaurants. But the strip mall at the cul de sac had no gas stations where we could service the truck. I doubled back along a route that was parallel to the one we’d come in on; by this means, I discovered a double-barrelled subway beneath the road we had exited. The left turn to the gas station was on the other side. To get there had taken me ten minutes and two miles by the odometer.

We filled up. Then made feints for the path which would take us back to the 91 freeway. There was no direct entrance onto Weir Canyon from the service station as you would find in a place where they considered the needs of the drivers. To get back to the avenue, we had to make a counter-intuitive left that made a horseshoe leading us to the right that we required to resume our heading towards Riverside and San Bernardino. All the routes we took to get our 15 gallons of gas whisked us past chain stores, auto dealerships, and cookie-cutter restaurants where we could expect to get the same meals that we got from every other member of those chains. Planners had engineered these roads for commerce: those who passed through were a second thought, the less important of the partners.

Then we got on the 91 Freeway, eastbound. Traffic moved a few yards at a time. There were six lanes, but only four were available to us.

Some years ago, as a measure to counteract a bankruptcy, Orange County sold the innermost two lanes to the Toll Roads. A clause prevented the county and the state from adding new lanes. Traffic has become gentrified along this sole route from Orange County businesses to Riverside and San Bernardino homes.

Traffic in the four public lanes is always packed at rush hour. Nothing frustrates the evening commuter more than the sight of Cadillacs and Mercedes zipping through the night on their left, just beyond a string of yellow posts, while s/he lurches and stalls in the remaining four lanes.

An article that appeared three years ago in the Orange County Edition of the Los Angeles Times describes the problem quite well:

It is believed that the rush hour on the Riverside Freeway through Santa Anna Canyon starts earlier that most anywhere in the state, around 5 a.m. But “rush” hardly describes the traffic flow. Speeds on the westbound morning commute are about 25mph. That, however, is not as bad as it promises to get.


Projections from a recent regional transportation study see Orange County’s job growth as being nearly triple that of its population growth by 2020 – a condition that will nearly double the canyon traffic. That will slow the commute speed to about 10 mph and add hours to time already being spent on the road between Orange County’s jobs and its bedroom communities in Riverside…..


Riverside officials have been quicker to respond. In addition to devising new routes and studying alternatives, they have sued the state to remove the roadblock to road improvements posed by the ill-advised, “noncompetition” clause in the contract on the private toll lanes.

This is my Orange County. A dictatorship of the dollar where the wants of business outrank the needs of the people who live and work there, the ones who make it prosper.