Helping Hands Are Out for Freeway : Transportation: Group of major businesses join as ‘Friends of the I-5’ to ensure money will be there to finish widening project.

Eager to ensure continued funding for the $1.9-billion Santa Ana Freeway widening project, a veritable “Who’s Who” of businesses along the route have banded together with several cities to form an advocacy group to lobby for the highway.

The organization, dubbed Friends of the I-5, has set as its first goal getting the California Transportation Commission to embrace ongoing funding for the highway when the agency considers its 1992 transportation funding program in March.

Among the participants are the Irvine Co., Disneyland, Carl Karcher Enterprises Inc., Anaheim Hilton and Towers, the California Angels, the Los Angeles Rams, Rockwell International and Hughes Aircraft Co.’s Ground Systems Group.

“It’s a rather impressive roster,” said Barry Rabbit, the Caltrans deputy district director overseeing the widening work. “There’s a lot of high-level people in important companies.”

Most of the firms represented on the coalition are based in the northern parts of the county, near the section of the freeway that still is not fully funded for the widening work. The cities of Anaheim, Santa Ana, Orange and Garden Grove are also participating in the coalition along with MainPlace shopping mall, the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, Anaheim Memorial Hospital and the Anaheim Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Ned Snavely, general manager of the Anaheim Marriott Hotel and acting chairman of the coalition, said members of the group hope that they can help spotlight the importance of the widening project. About half of the population and more than two-thirds of the jobs in Orange County are located within 3 miles of the Santa Ana Freeway.

“This is an effort to bring all the supporters in under one umbrella to make sure that things are headed in the right direction for completion of everything associated with the I-5 improvement program,” Snavely said.

Snavely said the widening project, which will eventually stretch from just north of San Clemente to the Los Angeles County line, is at a “critical stage” because half of the work is under way and questions remain about funding for the remaining portions, in particular the segment between the Garden Grove and Riverside freeways through Anaheim.

County officials are counting on money from Measure M, the half-cent sales tax increase approved by voters in 1990, but the fate of the transportation funding measure remains in doubt because of an ongoing legal struggle.

Even if Measure M survives, half the money for widening work through Anaheim must still be tapped from state and federal sources. Money is already in hand to double the width of the freeway from its current six lanes to 12 between the Costa Mesa and Garden Grove freeways. “Over and above Measure M we are in need of money from the state and federal governments to finance the total I-5 project,” Snavely said. “That’s the worry.”

State transportation officials say the presence of the group should help the Orange County project in the competition against other counties for money.

“This sort of group can be very influential in communicating to members of the state Transportation Commission the importance of the I-5 project to the economic welfare of the county,” Rabbit said.