Landowners May End Up Paying Partial Cost of Widening I-5

Owners of shopping centers and undeveloped farmlands lining the Santa Ana Freeway in Orange County may be asked to help pay the $900 million needed to unclog the aging artery after completion of a study that will try to measure the benefits to neighbors of widening the thoroughfare.

The study, authorized Monday by the Orange County Transportation Commission, proposes to look at benefits landowners might derive from widening Interstate 5 and how those benefits can be measured in economic terms.

It represents a new look at the longstanding problem of widening a freeway that has long been Orange County’s worst congestion problem--and the county’s biggest need in terms of highway improvement dollars.

Only a little more than a fourth of the money needed to widen the congested freeway has been allocated by the state through 1991, yet traffic jams on the heavily traveled route have extended to more than 10 hours a day.

In attempting to measure how additional freeway lanes would spur increased urbanization, the study’s approach is similar to the $415-million assessment program on new development that county officials have already launched in the growing southern part of the county to help pay for three proposed freeways.

Though cities and counties have been turning increasingly to landowners to help pay for local street improvements and even freeway interchange construction, no other county in the state has looked at the possibility of so-called “benefit assessments” on lands surrounding a freeway to finance systemwide freeway improvements, said Linda Bohlinger, Caltrans’ deputy director for transit development.

“What we’re trying to do is see if the benefits of widening the Santa Ana Freeway have a significant impact on the development going in around the freeway, and if there’s significant opportunities for that to happen because of the freeway widening,” said Stan Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Transportation Commission.

“You might have property that now can only be developed single-story, or two-story, for example, but now they might be able to develop eight-story because they have (freeway) access,” Oftelie said. “If that added growth can be made possible only by widening the freeway, at least we ought to be able to talk to the developers about taking part in the financing.”

Local transportation officials said benefit assessments on land around the freeway would help supplement state highway funds and would also help attract additional state and federal funds for the project, since local effort is a key standard in determining which counties receive aid.

But it is not clear how the development industry will view the proposal. Builders were unexpectedly supportive of the development fee program for south Orange County freeways, reasoning that growth in the south county can occur only if the new freeways are built.

However, John Erskine, executive director of the Building Industry Assn. of Orange County, said substantial new building fees in older areas of central Orange County could counteract city officials’ efforts to encourage redevelopment of those areas.

In many cases, he explained, cities are underwriting the costs for road development in their aging downtowns as incentives for new development.

“It’s going to be difficult to on the one hand provide infrastructure from public funds, and on the other hand say ‘but you’ve got to pay out for the 5 Freeway,’ ” Erskine said.

“Obviously, what’s going to happen is the developer’s going to say, if we can get sufficient densities (in exchange for) solving the transportation problem, then we’re going to be interested. But if it’s business as usual, only a new place to spend your capital for infrastructure fees, then it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to grasp with enthusiasm,” Erskine said.

Oftelie said it is too early to say how a benefit assessment program would be administered, since county officials won’t know until the study is completed whether there is even a substantial source of revenue to be tapped.

“We’re going to look at it,” he said. “The message we’ve heard loud and clear from Sacramento is that if you help yourself, you’ve got a greater chance of getting help from them. We’ve got to create some resources here that helps these things get funded.”

The commission has yet to select a firm to carry out the study, which is expected to be completed by January, 1987.