Rocky Road Ahead : Opponents of Growth Try to Block County Corridors to Development

In Orange County, famous for turning cattle ranches into subdivisions, the frontier always ended at the untamed foothills that rose up from the Saddleback Valley. Not anymore.

An advertisement for the new county city known as Rancho Santa Margarita promises would-be industrial builders a place “where the West begins. Again.”

The budding city of 50,000 broke ground last year on a vacant plain in the midst of the Santiago foothills, and the advertisement carries the promise of a new freeway jutting through the high country along one edge of a proposed business park, linked to a second new freeway just to the north.

These are the freeways--the Foothill and Eastern transportation corridors--that Orange County transportation planners have promised will bring needed relief to motorists trapped in the 10-hour-per-day congestion on the Santa Ana Freeway.

It is no accident that the Foothill Freeway would run directly through the center of Rancho Santa Margarita and past the newly developing regions of Mission Viejo; the Robinson, Glenn and Whiting ranches, and Coto de Caza. Foothill-area developers paid for the studies for the new freeway, and residents of their new homes will be responsible for 75.9% of the traffic that will use the freeway if it is built.

It is also no accident that the proposed San Joaquin Hills Freeway through the coastal foothills of Orange County, planned as a relief valve for congestion on the San Diego Freeway and Coast Highway, would run squarely through undeveloped lands that will one day be residential communities and business parks in Irvine, Laguna Canyon, Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo. Traffic from those and other new developments would contribute 72.6% of the automobiles each day on that freeway.

All three freeways have been in Orange County’s plans for years but recent efforts to finance them through a sales tax hike, which failed, and fees on new development, which are now being levied, have ignited a new battle in a county accustomed to waging war over growth.

The battle pits developers, who say the freeways are a necessary part of the county’s inevitable growth, against anti-growth advocates, who hope that halting freeway construction will stop the “out-of-control” development of south Orange County. Meanwhile, county studies say that building the three additional freeways won’t solve long-term traffic congestion but will merely ease traffic problems approaching gridlock that are forecast for most of the county’s freeways by 1995.

The debate focuses on Irvine, the first of Orange County’s master-planned “new towns,” the fastest growing city in California, a city recently chosen by U.S. News and World Report as the best place to live in America--and a city now dramatically affected by other new communities springing up at its borders.

Already, the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways plunge northward through the heart of Irvine.

The San Joaquin Hills and Foothill freeways would run through its residential fringes, bearing thousands of motorists and tons of gasoline exhaust pollutants into the scenic foothills that have cradled the city since its birth in the 1960s.

Construction of Orange County’s three new freeways, at a projected cost of $866 million, would begin within the next five years and be completed sometime in the next 20 years. They would be built at a time when state and federal highway funds are no longer readily available to pay for them. The effort to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in local funds to help finance their construction has raised new questions in Irvine and surrounding communities about the costs--both financial and environmental--of making way for growth.

“If we never built another home or another office in the city of Irvine, we’re still going to have to deal with everyone else’s traffic, so we better start planning for it. We’re not going to be able to stick our head in the sand and hope it’ll go away,” says Irvine Mayor David Baker, a strong proponent of construction of all three corridors, at least on a limited scale.

On the other side is a growing bloc of citizens, many of them active in the 1984 defeat of a proposed 1-cent sales tax increase for transportation projects, who are attempting to slow the pace of development in south Orange County and block construction of the freeways.

Irvine’s Committee of Seven Thousand last year collected signatures from more than 10,000 Irvine residents to force a citywide vote on a plan to assess fees on new development to pay for part of the freeways, one of a number of voter initiatives seeking to check the flow of new houses and cars into south Orange County.

The Irvine committee says city residents deserve a say in a measure they believe will add significantly to the price of new homes and retail items--and, in the end, mean a yes or no vote on the freeways.

The fee program, the largest of its kind ever assessed for road building in California, would raise $415.7 million from developments in the 10 cities and unincorporated county territories served by the corridors, slightly less than half the cost of the corridor construction.

The initiative was rejected by the state Court of Appeal after a coalition of builders and business groups filed suit, claiming that Irvine residents have no right to block financing for major transportation facilities that would benefit drivers all over the state. Initiative supporters have asked for a review by the state Supreme Court.

Both sides admit that the future quality of life in Orange County is at stake.

The Santa Ana and San Diego freeways are already choked with traffic. For 10 hours a day, the average speed on most freeways in the county is less than 35 m.p.h. During rush hour, speeds frequently are less than 20 m.p.h.

Already approved development plans call for more than 700,000 new residents and 500,000 new jobs in the county over the next 15 years, enough to choke the county’s existing freeway system into gridlock, traffic planners say. Without new facilities, traffic delays will be four times their present levels during afternoon rush hour alone, slowing average freeway speeds to 16 m.p.h., planners say.

The county Board of Supervisors has allowed developers to reach into the Santiago and San Joaquin foothills only with the provision that new freeways are built. Yet the county’s own studies show that approved development plans would exceed the capacity of the road system, even with the new freeways.

The San Joaquin Hills Freeway will be severely congested on the day it opens, several county studies indicate.

The Foothill Freeway, as now planned, will accommodate traffic from the undeveloped foothill area, but it will actually worsen conditions on the northern reaches of the Santa Ana Freeway by dumping its traffic onto that artery, studies show.

The county administrative office said that county road conditions in 1995 are expected to “significantly deteriorate” even if the initial four-lane phases of both the Foothill and San Joaquin Hills corridors are in place.

Most of the Costa Mesa, Riverside, Orange and San Joaquin Hills freeways will operate at less than 30 m.p.h. The San Diego and Santa Ana freeways will be even worse, operating at a level of service described as a “storage area” for cars, according to the report.

By the year 2000, with nearly full development of the new freeways--possibly up to 10 lanes apiece on all three corridors--and the widening of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways, the situation improves only slightly.

Most of the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways, and parts of the Orange, Garden Grove, Riverside and San Diego freeways, will operate at less than 20 m.p.h. for at least five hours a day, the studies say. And the San Joaquin Hills Freeway “is gonna be loaded up to however large it can be built,” says county transportation planning chief Jerry Bennett.

‘Out-of-Control’ Growth

The studies show that building the new freeways will keep traffic conditions about even with today’s levels, or slightly worse--but not as bad as they would be without the freeways.

Without the new freeways, Bennett said, “the people on I-5 are in for a world of trouble.”

“What’s happened is the growth in the south county is out of control. What we’re doing is mortgaging our long-term future for short-term gains,” said Norm Grossman, spokesman for Orange County Tomorrow, an organization formed after defeat of the sales tax issue that is now considering a countywide initiative on growth management.

“I have no fault with the contention that if we build out the general plan of Orange County, we will need those roads. That’s absolutely true,” said Irvine Councilman Ray Catalano, a UC Irvine professor and nationally recognized specialist in urban planning.

“I think the real question is whether we want to build out Orange County more intensely than what was assumed in (earlier land-use and traffic forecasts),” he said. “Now, you don’t add capacity to make the current road system work better. What you assume is that the current level of inconvenience is acceptable. It’s never going to get better. It’s going to get a lot worse.”

Supervisors Blamed

Irvine city officials, even some of those who favor the freeways, blame the county Board of Supervisors for approving new development in excess of the road system’s capacity.

County officials point to Irvine’s own skyrocketing population--forecast to swell from 80,000 to 215,000 by the end of the century--and such booming business centers as the Irvine Spectrum and the Irvine Business Complex. The centers have attracted thousands of new employees, many of whom commute from Riverside County and clog freeways in north and central Orange County.

“The stretches of the freeway which are called out as continuing to deteriorate are largely those in the incorporated area,” county Planning Director Robert Fisher said. “The county is contributing to the problem, but so are the cities, and neither has control over the other. The best we can do on a countywide basis is work toward implementation of the recommended improvements.”

Still, attacking freeways is a backward way of attacking growth, says Bryan Speegle, advance planning manager for the county. “If it worked that way, then the congestion on the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways would stop people from buying houses in Mission Viejo,” he said. “I haven’t seen any studies which show that to be the case.”

The public’s attitude is difficult to measure. A poll sponsored by opponents of last year’s proposed sales tax increase found that 79% of Orange County residents want slower growth. Most of them, about 44%, want “much slower” growth.

Pollster’s Findings

Yet UC Irvine pollster Mark Baldassare says as few as one in seven south county residents oppose growth, depending on how the question is asked. Most of them don’t equate growth with freeways, he added.

There has been a marked increase in the number of Orange County residents who are dissatisfied with the present freeway system. In 1982, 32% of the population said they were satisfied, compared to 18% in 1985, according to Baldassare.

The number of residents who favor building new freeways increased from 25% to 37% during the same period, with the largest increase just during the past year, Baldassare found.

Not surprisingly, for many south county residents, support for the freeways hinges on how much they will benefit from them.

Cities like Irvine, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana and Orange, for example, stand to gain by easing congestion on existing freeways through their communities.

For cities like San Juan Capistrano, where the City Council voted narrowly to participate in the freeway fee program, the questions are trickier.

Quality of Life Issue

“While the San Joaquin Freeway could make it easier for some San Juan Capistrano residents to get to Fashion Island, it will decrease the overall quality of life in the city,” senior city planner Larry Lawrence reflected in a memo to the city planning director.

Public Works Director W. D. Murphy, in another memo, asked, “Why should cities have to pay for roads which are constructed to provide access to private new developments?”

The funding question has been a focal point in the controversy surrounding the freeways.

Since discussions of the developer fee program began, the county has actually lowered the estimated construction cost for the Foothill Freeway, from $755.2 million to $516.2 million, simply by deciding not to include costs for anything wider than an eight-lane roadway.

Additionally, a committee of builders and county and city officials lowered the amount developers will have to pay in proportion to the traffic their development generates.

New Estimate of Benefits

Under the county’s first calculations, developers would have had to pay 67% of the construction costs of the Foothill Freeway, and 54% of the San Joaquin Hills Freeway, for a total developer contribution of $697 million.

After months of negotiations, new cities were brought into the “area of benefit” subject to the fees; the benefit area itself was divided into areas of greater or lesser benefit; assessments for neighborhood commercial development were reduced, and the positive impact the new freeways would have on surrounding surface streets was taken into consideration.

The upshot is that developers will pay not $697 million for the three freeways, as originally proposed, but $415.7 million.

Land that builders will donate for construction of the freeways is not included in any of the cost estimates, although developers will be paid for any land they give up in excess of the amount that would be required for a major arterial highway.

The remainder of the costs for the freeways, absent the local sales tax increase, must come from state and federal highway sources.

Shortfall Forecast

The most recent Development Monitoring Program report, a annual county administrative office report, forecasts a $208 million shortfall in money needed to build even the early four-lane phases of the freeways between now and 1990.

Builders, traditionally wary of additional fees on development, have been overwhelmingly supportive of the corridor fee program.

“It’s the county’s program and we support it,” said Jan Wilson, spokeswoman for the Santa Margarita Co., developers of Rancho Santa Margarita and Rancho Trabuco, which will bring more than 16,000 new homes and 9.2 million square feet of office, industrial and commercial development to an area now accessible only through the recent extension of Alicia Parkway.

The Irvine Co., with virtually all of its undeveloped lands adjacent to or near the three new freeways, will pay about a third of all developer fees assessed.

Irvine Co. President Thomas Nielsen said in an interview several months ago: “I guess I kind of view this as a user fee more than anything else. We were saying from the beginning we felt the newly developing properties should pay some fair share of these corridors. . . . It seems to me that’s a fair way for both users today and those of tomorrow.”

Growth Called Unstoppable

John Erskine, executive director of the Orange County Building Industry Assn., said it is “unrealistic” for residents opposed to the corridors to expect that if the corridors are stopped, growth will stop.

“As long as there’s no mass sterilization program in Orange County, growth will occur. We’re going to have more cars, and you’ve got to put them somewhere,” Erskine said.

Irvine Councilman Larry Agran wants a 165,000 cap on the population of Irvine and a 50% cutback in the rate of growth throughout south Orange County. He also wants to eliminate or sharply curtail the Foothill Corridor and limit the San Joaquin Hills Corridor to a scenic highway.

Agran is as confident as Erskine. “I really do believe that one way or another, the will of the people will prevail in the matter, and that freeways that are overwhelmingly rejected by the people will not be built,” Agran said.

“Whether that comes through the direct process of initiative and referendum or the less direct process of political responsiveness . . . in the end the people do get the message, and they deliver the message.”

SAN JOAQUIN HILLS CORRIDOR 105,000 new homes

54.7 million sq. ft. of industrial/commercial development

Total corridor user trips due to growth 177,892 per day

Total corridor user trips 245,112 per day

FOOTHILL/EASTERN CORRIDOR 167,622 new homes

70.9 million sq. ft. of industrial/commercial development

Total corridor user trips due to growth 221,965

Total corridor trips 292,443

Source: Orange County Environmental Management AgencyKEY FOR AREAS OF BENEFIT: