State Imposes a Landscaping Freeze on Most Road Projects

Facing multimillion-dollar shortfalls in state highway construction funds, the California Transportation Commission on Wednesday imposed a freeze on most new highway landscaping projects, proposing to redirect nearly $60 million in landscaping funds over the next five years into highway safety improvements.

“We have people dying every day on our roads because of highway (improvements) we can’t afford to build. I think we have to save peoples’ lives before we beautify,” commission Vice Chairman Joe Levy said of the decision, which followed several months of scrambling to accommodate a $650-million shortfall in federal highway funds for California through 1991.

At a special meeting in Irvine, the commission adopted a policy against funding any new highway landscaping projects other than the “minimum work” needed to satisfy court orders or legal requirements.

While the commission left the door open for counties to apply for exceptions to the freeze, it made it clear that local officials will have to turn to other sources--private contributions or municipal coffers--if they hope to get state money.

County Cooperation Invited

In imposing the freeze, the panel delayed, in most cases until 1990-91, about $60 million in landscaping projects already proposed for the $110-million highway landscaping budget for the next five years. The commission invited counties where projects are delayed to redirect the money into highway construction projects needed to enhance safety.

Orange and San Diego counties face the biggest delays, with projects totaling $15.7 million and $8.5 million, respectively. Most of the projects were postponed until the last year of the state’s current five-year transportation improvement program, while some projects face delays of only about three years.

“Because of the fiscal crisis we have right now with a minimum shortfall of $650 million, the commission feels very strongly that we must place road projects that are safety-related in nature above landscaping,” said commission Chairman Bruce Nestande, an Orange County supervisor. “Is there anybody out there who’d rather have landscaping than roads?”

“I came down I-5 from L.A.,” Levy added, “and if you could see the extensive plantings we have along that freeway, acres and acres of trees and shrubs, and we could do just as well with oleanders. Yet we have people dying every day on our roads because of highways we can’t build.”

Effort to Cut Landscaping Costs

“I bet a lot of ‘em are hitting those trees, too,” interjected Commissioner William Bagley.

For all the banter, landscaping is not without its own constituency--particularly in communities where freeway foliage has been torn up by widening projects, or where a new freeway cuts through an existing neighborhood, said Caltrans Chief Deputy Director Heinz Heckeroth.

State transportation planners say they already are working to reduce freeway landscaping costs. Moving to more efficient planting techniques and holding down expensive irrigation projects, Caltrans estimates it can landscape twice the acreage it could 10 years ago with the same amount of money.

“I think there is a continual testing of the public will in terms of the amount of landscaping,” Heckeroth added. “We have gone from nothing to outright beautification and back down again.”

The new policy specifies that, in nearly all cases, money freed by delaying landscaping projects in a particular county will be spent on needed highway safety improvements within that county. Local officials are free to submit proposals for shifting projects under their own jurisdiction. They also may submit their objections to any proposed landscaping delays for a final decision by the commission on Dec. 12.

Of the landscaping projects not delayed--about 30% of the total proposed--nearly half the planned expenditures, or $18 million, are targeted for the Century Freeway in Los Angeles County. That project qualifies for an exemption because a court order governing construction of the new freeway specifies that landscaping must be included.

Orange County Projects Affected

An additional $7.3 million in other Los Angeles County projects are proposed for delay.

In Orange County, $15.7 million in landscaping falls under the five-year delay.

The largest projects affected are those associated with the planned widening of the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways, plus the planned extension of the Costa Mesa Freeway and the interchange between the Costa Mesa and Santa Ana freeways.

However, because most of those projects are several years from completion, the landscaping delay will not have a major impact, said Lisa Mills of the Orange County Transportation Commission.