Reading this article -- "Debate Swirls Around Ortega Widening Plan" -- in today's OC Register reminds me there are certain strains of NIMBYism resistant to even the largest doses of reality.
The situation is pretty basic: Ortega is needs to be widened from two to four lanes in order to safely accommodate increased traffic.
And traffic will increase: from 24,000 vehicles per day now to an predicted 42,000 per day in 2030.
Not such inexorable numbers deter those who are opposing the widening. They're stance is nostalgia-based: they like Ortega Highway just the way it is, and don't want it to become a thoroughfare.
That's a nice sentiment, but you can't based transportation planning on it. It would be like fighting the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s because Route 66 is cool and shouldn't be changed no matter how inadequate it became.
The Ortega Highway, I its present condition, is inadequate to our present needs. We can't wish increased vehicle traffic away. The right thing is to build for it as far ahead of time as possible, in order to accommodate the increases as they occur rather than playing catch-up.