Santa Ana Freeway

Southbound Santa Ana Freeway motorists no longer have to take a detour when heading onto the Garden Grove Freeway. The southbound Santa Ana Freeway connector lanes to the eastbound and westbound Garden Grove Freeway reopened Friday. The connectors closed in January for realignment as part of the $1.1-billion Santa Ana Freeway widening project through North County.

Reader Ron King of Camarillo doesn't like how The Times refers to local freeways. A recent example , from Saturday's paper: The Getty fire started in high brush on the east side of the 405 Freeway near Getty Center Drive during the afternoon rush hour… King - and other readers - think that reference should have been to the San Diego Freeway. “Freeways should be referred to by their names, not federal interstate numbers like they do in other unimaginative places that don't have interesting traditions,” King emailed.

The southbound Santa Ana Freeway connector to the eastbound Riverside Freeway will be closed from 6 a.m. until noon Saturday for road work, according to officials with the California Department of Transportation. In addition to that closure, the northbound lanes of the Santa Ana Freeway will be shut down from 4th Street to the Garden Grove and Orange freeway interchanges beginning at 11 p.m. Tuesday and continuing through 5 a.m. Wednesday.

It's hard to miss the 10-story-high cube that appears to be balanced precariously above the bustling freeway in Santa Ana. For more than a decade, the metallic cube has loomed outside Orange County's Discovery Science Center, a strange roadside attraction that prompts people to pull off the Santa Ana Freeway to get a closer look. And for more than a decade, visitors have asked the same thing: what's inside? "It's one of the biggest questions I always get," said Joe Adams, president of the science center and museum.

Freeway crews tonight will close the southbound lanes of the Santa Ana Freeway for a three-quarter-mile stretch, Caltrans said. From 11:30 p.m. until 5 a.m. Monday, the three southbound lanes from the 4th Street exit to the Costa Mesa Freeway will be closed. The three lanes are being re-striped to prepare for future work near the 1st Street exit, the state Department of Transportation said.

Someone apparently firing from beside the Santa Ana Freeway in Santa Ana shot out the windshield of a southbound vehicle Wednesday night, the California Highway Patrol reported. No one was injured, officers said. The shot apparently came from the east side of the freeway south of the interchange with the Garden Grove Freeway, officers said. They said it was uncertain whether a small-caliber firearm or a pellet gun was used.

A connector from the Santa Ana Freeway to the Riverside Freeway will be closed for about 15 hours Sunday while road crews work on the ramp. Drivers headed north on the Santa Ana Freeway to the westbound Riverside Freeway will have to make a detour by continuing to Beach Boulevard, turning south and then catching the Riverside Freeway at the Beach onramp. The work is scheduled to begin at midnight tonight and continue until about 3 p.m. Sunday.

A 26-year-old Lake Forest man died Saturday morning after his car spun out of control on the Santa Ana Freeway, authorities said. Ricardo Sanchez, was driving south about 5 a.m. when the accident occurred just before the freeway merges with the San Diego Freeway in Lake Forest, said Orange County Deputy Coroner Rod Thomas. The California Highway Patrol did not release any other information on the crash.

A driver was killed Saturday when his car rolled several times on the Santa Ana Freeway, finally landing upside down. Authorities did not disclose the identity of the man, who was pronounced dead at the scene. The man's car veered left into the center divider about 11:40 a.m. just south of Brookhurst Avenue then back across all lanes of the freeway and into another car moving in the same direction.

In a brazen and unusual attack, a San Diego County woman was raped on the side of Interstate 5 last weekend by a man who asked if she needed help after her car broke down, authorities said. "I've never heard of this happening on a freeway," said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. "It shows that he's a very brazen individual, which makes him extremely dangerous." The 24-year-old woman was driving south toward her San Diego County home about 2:30 a.m.

Orange County transportation planners Monday agreed to fund a study on how to relieve congestion on the Santa Ana Freeway from north of the El Toro Y to San Clemente. The $1.

A lawyer representing the Ladera Ranch couple whose three young children died last week when a big rig rear-ended their minivan on Interstate 5 said Tuesday that the grieving parents were "holed up" in a hospital room relying on "faith, God and family" to get through the crisis and give meaning to their children's lives. "This is a very special family," Jeoffrey L.

The offramp to Artesia Boulevard from the northbound Santa Ana Freeway will close tonight at 11 for freeway widening. The new ramp is expected to open in March. -- Source: Orange County Transportation Authority

Motorists driving the Santa Ana Freeway will encounter nightly construction delays beginning Sunday. Ten miles of asphalt is scheduled to be replaced with rubberized pavement from the El Toro Y in Irvine north to Fourth Street in Santa Ana, Caltrans officials said. In addition, they said, the repaving of Jeffrey Road and the I-5 interchange onramp will occur nightly from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. The $14-million pavement project is expected to be completed in October.

Rosalind Gonzales has lived in her Norwalk house 30 years, raising her two now-adult sons there. She told state officials Tuesday that she's not ready to move -- even though her home might have to be demolished to make room for an expanded Santa Ana Freeway. "I don't want to move," the 58-year-old nurse's aide said. "You just can't throw me somewhere else and tell me to start over again. Life is too short." Gonzales was among more than 250 people who attended a public hearing on the proposed $1.

Surviving in the shadow of its big brother to the north, Orange County has had its share of self-esteem issues. But an ongoing widening project on the Santa Ana Freeway has transportation planners thumping their chests with pride. The freeway -- a virtual Main Street of Southern California -- is being widened and improved on the Orange County side of the county line.

A rebuilt connector from the eastbound Garden Grove Freeway to the southbound Santa Ana Freeway reopens today, after being closed for more than a year Source: Orange County Transportation Authority