Building Trades News

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The planned sign welcoming commuters will be a simple one. But last month, the OCTA board voted to enhance the welcome notice with landscaping around the monument to include a lawn, a dozen orange trees and some palm trees.

The cost for design and planning is $35,000, and construction another $140,000. The O.C. transit agency would pay at least $15,000 a year for maintenance.

The proposed sign is a bit of chest–thumping for Orange County which often lives in the shadow of its neighbor to the north. It is also recognition of the vital work that Building Trades members perform to keep the economy, and lives, of Southern Californians moving.

“The welcome sign to greet motorists on the improved and widened 1-5 freeway would be a testament to the hard work of our members,” said Richard Slawson, Executive-Secretary of Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. “We literally build LA and Orange Counties. This is evident in this freeway expansion project that will make it easier for commuters to get to work and for goods to be transported to market.”

Art Brown, Mayor of Buena Park and chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority, agreed. "I think it's important because it is the gateway from Los Angeles County into Orange." The site at Artesia Boulevard in Buena Park has for years been an eyesore because of poor freeway maintenance, Brown said.  

The widening project began in June 2006. It will expand the freeway from three to five lanes in each direction along a two-mile stretch in Buena Park — 10 years before a similar widening of the freeway is expected to be finished in Los Angeles County. More than half of the funds for the project come from Measure M funds.

In 1990, Orange County voters approved Measure M, a 20-year program for transportation improvements funded by a half-cent sales tax. Measure M allocates all sales tax revenues to specific Orange County transportation improvement projects in four major areas—freeways, streets, roads and transit.  Voters approved an extension of Measure M in November.