Scott Road widening on the horizon

By: CHRIS BAGLEY - Staff Writer | Sunday, May 13, 2007 1:03 AM PDT ∞

RIVERSIDE -- With the recent go-ahead for a study, a widening of Scott Road and its interchange with Interstate 215 is on track to begin this year and continue for several years, Riverside County officials said.

The county Board of Supervisors last month approved $177,000 in additional funding for a study of how the interchange would affect surrounding neighborhoods, air quality and the county's pocketbook. The project could cost $65 million, Transportation Director George Johnson said recently.

A $1.7 million study was already under way but was expanded after the county's transportation planners discovered over the last two years that population growth would eventually render the interchange improvements inadequate. Projections for traffic along Scott Road -- and the updated plans for the interchange -- are based on eventual growth foreseen in the county's 2003 General Plan. Earlier plans for the interchange considered only the growth expected by about 2020.

Johnson said he expects construction to begin by the end of the year, widening a two-mile section of Scott Road from two lanes to four by the end of 2008. Construction on the interchange itself is expected to begin in 2010, he said.

Traffic on local roads will have almost certainly grown heavier by then, transportation officials say.

Construction at the interchange would change its appearance radically, requiring a new, larger bridge several yards to the north of the existing bridge, Johnson said. It's expected to be at least 10 lanes wide. That includes four lanes of traffic in each direction and two left-turn lanes. The current bridge over I-215 is just three lanes, including a single lane that's intended to be used by left-turning traffic entering either side of the freeway.

The county would build half the new bridge and reroute Scott Road before demolishing the existing bridge, Johnson said.

That could mean relief for drivers such as Kimberly Wiscott, a Temecula resident who slogs through afternoon traffic on Antelope Road twice a week when returning from Mt. San Jacinto College. Drivers who take the same route frequently wait behind one another because the short left-turn lane on the I-215 overpass doesn't efficiently allow westbound drivers to pass those waiting to turn onto the southbound lanes of the interstate, she said.

The $10 million expansion of Scott Road is expected to ease traffic that's moderately heavy now and expected to get denser, Johnson said. Until recently, drivers approaching the freeway at some times of day waited as long as 20 minutes to reach the stop signs, which were clearly not enough to handle the thousands of new residents in surrounding areas of Murrieta and Menifee. New traffic signals at the intersection have eased those waits.

County officials estimated last year that as many as 18,000 vehicles daily were passing through the nearby intersection of Scott and Antelope roads.

The replacement of the stop signs with traffic signals has visibly eased the crunch.

"I'm not getting any complaints anymore," Johnson said. "It's down to something the average motorist can tolerate."

The long-range plan, transportation officials say, is to turn Scott Road into a six-lane thoroughfare stretching 4.5 miles from I-215 all the way to Highway 79 North. The construction expected to begin later this year would widen only the two-mile stretch between I-215 and Briggs Road.

-- Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2615, or cbagley@californian.com.

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