By Lauren Nguyen, Staff Writer
The bridge overpassing the San Diego Freeway on Slater Avenue north of Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) will start construction to demolish and widen the bridge at 1 a.m. on Sept. 21. Original construction plans for the bridge to be kept partially open have been changed to close the bridge off completely. Traffic around the school is expected to slow down drastically at the beginning and end of the school day.
“As we were told this morning, there will be no access for cars, bicycles or pedestrians over Slater bridge. The entire bridge will be demolished,” said Supervision and Athletics Assistant Principal Elliot Skolnick.
The construction will operate for 12 months. Though the timeline expects the bridge construction to be completed by late September of next year, delays may occur due to weather and safety hazards. The bridge on Slater Avenue is one of the seven main ways students get to FVHS, so the closure will force those students to find another route to school. In the meantime, FVHS supervision suggests that students find alternatives to get to school and try to avoid the busy traffic that will ensue.
“I think for each person, they’re going to have to look at the time that they need to be at school, or at work, and they’re going to need to plan ahead and give themselves way more time,” said Skolnick. “My advice to people is always to try to relax and not panic in that moment and know that we know there’s going to be more traffic, and you have to [not only] plan ahead time-wise, but…also to put yourself in the proper mental state to be ready to deal with that and accept it and not get frustrated.”
The project to remodel the bridge is a part of the Interstate-405 Improvement Project launched by the Orange County Transportation Authority in effort to accommodate the rapidly increasing traffic the interstate has anticipated for future years. The project will add two general traffic lanes, turn the current carpool lanes on the freeway into 405 Express Lanes and improve the condition of the roadways for 16 miles of the I-405 freeway from State Route 73 (SR-73) to Interstate 605 (I-605).
“The 405 Project is working with our school district and the Fountain Valley School District to look at some alternatives for students to get to school, so we’ll be exploring that. We are asking people to plan ahead, to expect that it’s going to take longer to get to school or to work for our staff and to look at ways they could maybe carpool. They could walk or ride their bikes, or maybe they could be dropped off a little bit away from school and then walk the final distance so that we don’t have as much congestion,” said Skolnick.
All seven bridges in Fountain Valley (Ward Street, Talbert Avenue, Brookhurst Street, Slater Avenue, Bushard Street, Warner Avenue and Magnolia Street) will be affected by the project eventually, as the construction plan staggers the dates for starting reconstruction in order to prevent traffic from being too concentrated in several places.
“We do want to make sure that people give themselves enough time, that they don’t wait until the last minute because we know that there’s going to be congestion. We really want to make sure that they’re taking the safest way possible to get to school and then we’ll be following up with more information that we’re sending out to all the parties,” said Skolnick.
For more information on the project and its impact on Fountain Valley, visit fountainvalley.org.
