Seal Beach residents will soon get some much-needed relief at a busy freeway off-ramp.
On Monday night, the City Council OK'd plans to renovate the College Park Drive/Studebaker Road off-ramp at the western end of the 22 freeway.
The project would widen the intersection and create a dedicated left-turn pocket to enter the on-ramp and a dedicated right-turn lane exiting from College Park Drive.
The project is scheduled to begin this month and expected to end in August.
Seal Beach drivers, especially those leaving College Park West, have had to wait a long time at the intersection because of the high number of vehicles entering and exiting the freeway.
“This has been a problem for over 20 years,” said Sean Crumby, Seal Beach assistant city manager.
However, Crumby said, the off-ramp is outside Seal Beach boundaries, resting in Caltrans District 7 in Long Beach.
“Residents would … (ask us) to fix it, but we didn’t have a ton of leverage,” Crumby said. “But after persistence, and help from Long Beach and Caltrans, we’re moving forward.”
The city began pushing for the project in 2009 and conducted traffic studies that showed there were high congestion levels at the intersection, according to the staff report.
Officials then successfully petitioned Caltrans, Long Beach and the Orange County Transportation Authority, and secured $750,000 in grants for the renovations.
With a 4-0 vote May 14, the City Council awarded the $435,000 contract for the project to All American Asphalt.
The Council also signed a $10,000 professional services agreement with Willdan Engineering to assist with construction efforts.
During the March bidding process, Long Beach asked that landscaping improvements be added to the project, and last night Seal Beach also OK'd $25,000 in expenditures for landscaping.
Seal Beach has $900,000 budgeted for the project, and staff expects it to cost about $647,900.
To read the staff report on the item, click the PDF file attached at the top right of this article.
