Caltrans Director Outlines Steps to Prevent Transportation Crisis

California must combine three crucial elements if it is to avoid a transportation crisis, the director of the California Department of Transportation said Monday in Costa Mesa.

They are “anticipation, cooperation and innovation,” Leo J. Trombatore told a luncheon audience of about 70 at a Town Hall of California meeting at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel.

“In both Orange County and the rest of the state (these) are three key ingredients necessary to solve our transportation problems,” the Caltrans director said.

In a wide-ranging, 45-minute speech, Trombatore quoted statistics projecting that Orange County’s population will increase more than 45% over the next 25 years, and the state population will grow to 31 million from the present 25 million by the year 2000. Such rapid growth, he said, will cause travel on the state’s highways to continue to expand past capacity.

“If this trend continues, congestion will increase, and statewide operating speeds could decrease from 42 miles per hour now to 30 m.p.h. in 1995,” Trombatore said.

Much of today’s traffic problems are caused by people not working near their homes, Trombatore said. There also is a lack of major arterials running parallel to freeways, which can offer a “safety valve” for roadways.

“And believe me, there is nowhere this is more evident than in Orange County.”

But through road improvements and such programs as ride-sharing, van-pooling and increased transit services, congested freeway systems can be helped, he said.

Trombatore praised the Deukmejian Administration for its support of transportation projects, citing projects funded in the current state budget. About $1 billion in highway work is under way or has gone out to contract. In the past three years 134 projects have been started, he said.

“Thanks to the current administration, California has an ambitious and aggressive transportation program,” he said. He said the previous administration of Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. failed to plan for the state’s transportation needs.

However, budget cuts and funding constraints at both the state and federal level are “today’s transportation financing realities,” Trombatore said, and he urged communities to raise local funds to pay for pressing transportation problems.