In the first few months of 2025, the Orange County Transportation Authority expects to fully open the improvements it has been adding to the 5 Freeway between El Toro Road and the 73 Toll Road.
Wrapping up the multi-year freeway project is part of what the transportation agency’s CEO said is an anticipated busy year ahead with construction on the 55 Freeway and 91 Freeway and in local communities to “meet the needs of residents who are many decades in the future.”
The $665 million 5 Freeway project in South Orange County — county, state and federal transportation programs are splitting the cost — has added a lane in each direction on the 5 Freeway between Avery Parkway and Alicia Parkway in Mission Viejo and extended the second carpool lane from Alicia Parkway to El Toro Road, “which was a big bottleneck,” said Darrell Johnson, the CEO of the transportation authority.
The local portion is being paid for out of the funds raised by the half-cent sales tax voters approved for transportation projects in Orange County.
“All 33 of the on and off ramps are complete, all of the retaining walls are complete, all of the major bridges are complete,” Johnson said. “What we are working on now is final striping, shoulder work, some center medians.”
“I live a little further south, so this is a highway I drive every day, and every day it looks better,” he said. “So we are excited about that. If you drive it, you will see the progress: new lanes, new lighting, new signage, safety improvements.”
Commuters on the 55 Freeway between the 5 and 405 freeways are also seeing progress on an expansion that officials say should help with congestion on the heavily used segment.
Both directions of the 55 will have a second carpool lane and a second lane for general use when the project is complete; Johnson reported it’s about 35% of the way there. Improvements being made to how vehicles get on and off the freeway will also help with backups, he said.
“We are on schedule for completion in early 2027,” he said. “Some of the activities that will be upcoming, we’ve got plans to complete the improvements to bridges that are over Edinger, Dyer and also the Metrolink rail line that is there. There is work to complete the realignment of the MacAurther and Dyer ramps.”
Two new road projects that are now expected to break ground in early 2025 are improvements to the interchange between Katella Avenue and the 605 Freeway — including improving bike lanes and sidewalks through that area — and changes to the transition between the 91 Freeway and the 55 Freeway.
“It’s a little bit larger project,” Johnson said, adding it should break ground this month. “You know the 91 corridor continues to be overloaded and overutilized. We’ve got the jobs and housing imbalances between Riverside County and Orange County. It’s a very challenging corridor.”
To help ease congestion, he said, the project will add a ramp dropping drivers from a reconfigured Lakeview Avenue bridge right onto the 55 or 91, avoiding them having to navigate across multiple lanes as others are weaving and merging to get to where they need to go on either freeway.
The agency has also spent the last year seeing how the massive investment in expanding the 405 Freeway from the 73 Toll Road to the 605 Freeway and implementing paid express lanes played out in improvements to traffic.
The $2.16 billion project was completed and opened to drivers on Dec. 1, 2023 and has now provided a year of traffic pattern data.
Northbound during rush hour, Johnson said the corridor has seen a 32% improvement in travel times, or about 12 minutes, for those in the regular lanes. The southbound influx of morning work commuters has seen about 8 minutes.
The tolled 405 Express Lanes have seen 16 million trips taken in the first 12 months, he said. “That is a lot. … What we are seeing there, compared to when the carpool lanes were there, we are seeing people save more than 20 minutes during rush hour in each direction over the 14 miles.”
“We are really happy with the performance of those in the first year,” he said, also reminding people that for the first 3.5 years, the express lanes will be free for cars with two people during non-peak hours and will also be free at all hours for those with three or more people in a car. A switchable transponder is needed.
A major OCTA project not involving freeway work Johnson said the community should also see progress on this year is the 4.15 mile OC Streetcar that will have 10 stops between the Santa Ana train station and Garden Grove at Harbor Boulevard and Westminster Avenue.
OCTA officials expect to test the streetcar vehicles on the streets later this year.
Johnson acknowledged the multi-year delay the project has experienced but said progress is now back on track.
“It’s no secret we have been frustrated, there’s been frustrating delays with the project,” he said. “I think it’s been a bit of a learning process for us, for the city of Santa Ana, for the contractor working on building the first modern electric street car in Orange County.”
The project saw delays in 2023 from the discovery of contaminated soil and human remains underground that had to be resolved and rain and supply chain delays that added time and costs to the project, Johnson said, but got through most of what needed to happen in 2024 on time and without further increases to the now $579 million budget.
The next big milestone will be getting the vehicles, which have been waiting in a Northern California warehouse, delivered to O.C. and tested to make sure they meet several levels of safety requirements to begin then transporting riders, he said.
“We fully expect the first two streetcar vehicles will be delivered in March,” Johnson said, with all eight vehicles in the county by the end of summer. “We should be running and operating vehicles — they’ll be empty without people in them — but we’ll be doing the testing in the summer of 2025.”
Opening the system to riders isn’t expected until early 2026, he said.
An education campaign in the communities where the streetcars will begin sharing streets with drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians will launch in the late spring and early summer, he added.
The agency’s traditional bus system is seeing about 120,000 riders a day, back up from a pandemic slump that fell as low as 30,000 riders each weekday, Johnson said, adding that O.C. has seen a return to the pre-COVID use that neighboring counties are still falling short of and nationally is only at about 75%.
The OCTA did a good job, Johnson argued, targeting pandemic relief funds received from the state and federal governments to add back service hours and expand routes where demand was seen to regrow ridership efficiently.
The use of the system in the county’s urban core remains strong, he said, and growth is seen in “that next sort of outer ring, in that emerging core where we see more ridership happening in less traditional places.”
The agency is also seeing a good response to its programs offering youth and community college students free bus rides, which launched in the last few years.
Replacement of the fleet with lower- and now more zero-emission buses will continue, and in November, the OCTA board approved the purchase of 50 more, 40 hydrogen fuel cell and 10 plug-in electric buses, he said. Delivery of those will bring the number of zero-emission vehicles in the 500-bus fleet to 70.
Johnson said 2025 will also be a year involving more planning for the future.
Study will start on what improvements can be made in the near-term and longer-term to the rail line connecting the county to San Diego and Los Angeles, especially in south O.C., where tracks run close to the ocean and have seen damage in recent years because of erosion.
Also launching will be an update to long-range transportation planning to meet needs for the next 30 years. It’s a process the agency undergoes every four years, and 2025 will include public engagement and connecting with city leaders and other stakeholders before the update is due in 2026.
“That goes into the broader Southern California planning process for transportation and housing,” Johnson said.
And the agency will be planning its move into a building it has purchased for its new headquarters — not far from the office building it has leased for 30 years.
Escrow closed in October, paying $54.5 million for the building at Main Street and Memory Lane in Santa Ana. The move will take about three years, with upgrades needed for the new location.
With the cost of the building and the improvements, the new headquarters are expected to be a $128.5 million project, but Johnson points out the agency will be saving about $50 million in rent over about 30 years.
Also in September, the OCTA board awarded a $44 million contract for the construction that will get underway this year for a new security and operations center in Anaheim for its transit system, replacing an aging facility in Garden Grove. It will be home to the dispatchers for the bus system, the new streetcar and the transit police services.
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