State Route 91 IRP

State Route 91
Inter-Regional Partnership

Existing Conditions
This section provides information on growth trends, the gap between jobs and housing, a comparison of ratios of jobs to housing units, and residential preferences that contribute to the ongoing jobs/housing imbalance in the region.

Population: Six of Orange County's cities, with a combined population of 1,054,536, had over 3.4 persons per occupied dwelling unit including Santa Ana at 4.6, the highest density of any city of over 75,000 people in California. By contrast, fast growing Riverside County had just four cities with a population of 260,414 that were over 3.4 persons per unit. Riverside County is in the midst of an aggressive population boom. From 1980 - 2002, it added 963,600 people. From 2002 - 2020, it is expected to add another 804,700 to reach 2.4 million.
Jobs: SR-91 commuters are more likely than their non-commuting counterparts to be employed in hi-tech/computers/internet, construction/labor, and light Industrial/manufacturing industries. SR-91 commuters are more likely than their non-commuting counterparts to be employed in occupations that require training and education. They also receive higher salaries, on average, than their non-commuting counterparts.
Traffic: The current average daily traffic on the SR-91 between Western Riverside and Orange counties is between 200,000 to as high as 250,000 vehicles per day. Travel demand is expected to increase to over 400,000 vehicles per day by the year 2025.
Jobs-Housing Imbalance: Across Southern California there were 1.28 jobs per occupied dwelling unit in 2001. Orange County exceeded this level at 1.51. Riverside County had only 0.96 jobs per occupied dwelling unit. Put another way, in 2001, there were 495 jobs available for every 1,000 people living in Orange County. In Riverside County, there were 306 local jobs per 1,000 residents in 2001.
Preference to Work Locally in Comparable Jobs: Despite their high levels of frustration with commuting, the vast majority of SR-91 commuters indicated that they were simply not prepared to make the trade-offs necessary to live near their current employers. On the other hand, seventy-two percent of SR-91 commuters indicated that they would be interested in working locally if they could have a comparable job that paid the same as their current job. If the job involved a 10 percent pay reduction, 38 percent stated that they were still interested.