Head of Transit Agencies Urges Use of Tolls to Help Fund New Highways

The executive director of two agencies set up to build three new highways in Orange County strongly endorsed tolls Thursday as a way to pay a 56% funding shortfall for the projects.

John Meyer, who became the first full-time director of the San Joaquin Hills and Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor agencies five months ago, told a builders’ conference at the Irvine Hilton:

“I am an advocate of toll roads. . . . My experience with them has convinced me that you can’t find a better solution. . . . Many of the negatives, such as long waits at toll booths, have been ironed out in the last few years.”

Meyer, former executive director of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority in Florida, said many nations are ahead of the United States in toll collection technology. He cited Spain, where authorities speed motorists through toll stations by taking down license plate information and running a “tab” that appears later on drivers’ monthly telephone bills.

Addressing about five dozen members of the Building Industry Assn. of Orange County, Meyer said tolls could be used to pay back revenue bonds, which would be sold to finance road construction. He did not explain, however, what he would do to persuade a reluctant Legislature in Sacramento to allow the tolls.

Last year, a bill by Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) died for lack of a motion in the Senate Transportation Committee after senators denounced toll roads as “an enormous departure” from traditional road-financing policies in California.

Only last September, Meyer, a former general manager of the San Diego Transit Corp., had said, “I’m not coming out here to California, advocating that tolls are the way to go.”

Developers are expected to pay $415 million of the total $858-million cost of the three new highways. The joint powers authorities led by Meyer have collected about $15 million in developer fees so far, with some of the money already spent on engineering studies and acquisition of rights of way.

The San Joaquin Hills Corridor roadway will connect the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach to Interstate 5 near Avery Parkway. The Eastern Corridor will link the Riverside Freeway with the Santa Ana Freeway through Anaheim Hills and North Tustin. The Foothill Corridor will link the Eastern road with San Clemente through the Santa Ana Mountains. All three projects are overseen by joint powers agencies whose boards include elected county officials, developers and elected officials from several cities along the proposed routes.

Shifting gears quickly, participants at Thursday’s conference moved from traffic issues to strident criticism of Irvine Mayor Larry Agran and other slow-growth advocates who are considering a petition drive to qualify a countywide growth limitation initiative.

Orange County’s environmental management agency director, Ernie Schneider, was among several speakers who claimed that Agran’s efforts to reduce the scope of the San Joaquin Hills Corridor project contradict his previous City Council votes favoring development that has contributed to regional traffic jams.

Schneider said he recently met with Agran to discuss the need for new freeways based on the amount of daily trips generated by development that already has been approved. According to Schneider, the numbers surprised Agran, who then argued that county officials should “roll back entitlements” (permits) previously given to developers.

Former Irvine Councilman Bill Vardoulis, who chairs the Building Industry Assn.’s transportation committee, strongly attacked Agran for using sophisticated political techniques, including mail targeted at homeowners’ groups, to “tell lies.”

Agran, who last week co-sponsored a growth management seminar at UC Irvine, could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, executives of the Irvine Co., Mission Viejo Co. and the Santa Margarita Co. complained that the public mistakenly believes that there has been inadequate planning for more growth because it is largely unaware of transportation projects, including the planned new highways, that developers are partly financing.

Several speakers advocated public education campaigns designed to counter slow-growth arguments, emphasizing the risk of economic decline that growth limitation measures pose.

“There was an awful lot of Agran-bashing in there,” said Stan Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Transportation Commission, upon leaving Thursday’s meeting. “They were a bit too strident for me.”