After two years of plan-ning and study, the Orange County Transportation Authority Board of Directors has formally adopted our recommended Locally Preferred Strategy (LPS) for the South Orange County Major Investment Study (SOCMIS).

The SOCMIS reaffirmed the completion of the Foothill-South/241 Toll Road extension and the La Pata extension as a baseline for the expansion of arterials needed to relieve traffic congestion in the region.


The SOCMIS LPS will serve as the master plan for transportation projects that will meet expected growth from 360,000 vehicles per day to 450,000 vehicles per day by 2030.

The OCTA Board’s unanimous support for SOCMIS completes the first major step in developing this long-range, balanced transportation plan that includes varied solutions such as improved streets, roads and freeways; transit, commuter rail and express bus service.

The result of this technical and stakeholder-driven process, the LPS, will serve as the master plan for programming transportation projects for further environmental and engineering studies. Preparing "shelf ready" projects from these studies is crucial to South County’s eligibility to receive transportation dollars from the state and federal governments.

Three conceptual projects, which are focused on expanding East-West corridor capacity, are separate from the LPS and require further study.
Progress also continues on Orange County’s toll roads, as the Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) recently celebrated two ground-breaking events to begin construction of additional lanes on the 73 and 241 Toll Roads.

On the 73, TCA will add a fourth lane from Aliso Viejo Parkway to just north of the Laguna Canyon Road entrance ramp (about a 2.7 mile distance). An additional fourth lane will also be constructed from the Catalina View Toll Plaza to the MacArthur Blvd. exit (a distance of 3.3 miles).

And on the 241, TCA will add a third FasTrak lane in each direction of the toll road through the Windy Ridge Toll Plaza, running from the Southern California Edison wildlife crossing to the Windy Ridge Wildlife undercrossing (a distance of about 3 miles).
It is important that we all think regionally in terms of finding solutions to our transportation problems.

We must work together in a collaborative approach and look at every possible alternative. Only through empirical studies and public discussion can we have proper evidence to move some alternatives forward and eliminate those that are deemed unfeasible.