Put to the road test

ARNOLD Schwarzenegger promised to bring an end to business as usual in Sacramento and deliver a greener California. Now those promises are being tested as the governor considers how to respond to a proposal by Orange County’s Transportation Corridor Agency to build a major toll road through the heart of the state park at San Onofre State Beach.

There is no denying the proposed road’s extraordinary cost to the park, to the millions of visitors each year and to the surrounding San Mateo Creek watershed. And Schwarzenegger’s opposition, in the courts or on the evening news, could be a significant obstacle for the project. The Orange County agency and its Sacramento lobbyists are hoping his belief in privately funded toll roads in general, and his need to solidify his base among county Republicans, will persuade him to support the toll road or at least to stand quietly on the sidelines.

But this isn’t just any toll road, and Schwarzenegger is no shrinking violet when it comes to the environment.

The proposed Foothill South toll road would eviscerate an irreplaceable state resource -- one of the five most popular state parks in California -- along the park-deprived Southern California coast. Established in 1971 by Gov. Ronald Reagan as a “great legacy” of unspoiled land for future generations, it has been maintained or defended by every administration since, Republican and Democrat.

The agency now proposes to bisect Reagan’s legacy from top to bottom, closing 60% of the park, destroying its most popular campground, polluting its world-class surfing beaches and degrading critical habitat for 11 endangered or threatened species. The peace and quiet enjoyed by 2.5 million visitors each year will be gone.

Beyond lost parkland, the toll road is irreconcilable with Schwarzenegger’s commitment to smart growth and curbing global warming. He has put California on the cutting edge in implementing strategies to control greenhouse gas emissions. But the toll road would pave over scarce open space and accelerate the urban sprawl that has diminished our quality of life and kept us addicted to oil. If traffic demand from future growth is the problem, as the agency claims, this project is a solution we can no longer afford.

Better alternatives exist -- 21st century alternatives like rapid transit, carpool toll lanes with congestion-sensitive pricing and strategic widening of Interstate 5 -- that can address traffic needs in Orange County without compromising San Onofre. Unfortunately, the agency has refused to analyze them even in the wake of the failed San Joaquin Hills toll road to the west, which, because of ridership well below predictions, has for years been mired in financial difficulty. The governor believes that privately funded toll roads have a future in California, but there has to be a better model than the agency’s outdated “slash and pave” approach.

SCHWARZENEGGER’S own state parks director and a unanimous State Parks Commission have urged the governor to protect San Onofre through any available means, including litigation. They know the toll road threatens not just this state park but sets a dangerous precedent for the development of others.

They understand too that paving our parklands has no place in an administration committed to fiscal responsibility. According to government estimates, California state parks directly generate $2.6 billion a year, plus an additional $4 billion in indirect spending by the 80 million people who visit them. Safeguarding the parklands that underlie California’s multibillion-dollar coastal tourism and recreational economies is just plain common sense.

No society can prosper where political expediency trumps common sense. “Once [an elected official] begins to weigh each issue in terms of his chances for reelection,” President Kennedy wrote in “Profiles in Courage,” “once he begins to compromise away his principles on one issue after another for fear that to do otherwise would halt his career and prevent future fights for principle, then he has lost the very freedom of conscience which justifies his continuance in office.”

In this case, no great act of political courage is required to conclude that the toll road’s costs are unacceptable. It is the antithesis of smart growth; it is economically unsound; it is environmentally destructive; and it is precisely the kind of bad idea that Schwarzenegger was elected to fight.