Supervisors Seek Road Priorities for South County

With a sidelong glance at both slow-growth and pro-growth forces, Orange County supervisors zeroed in again Wednesday on the traffic problems of the southern part of the county and asked for a three-year “action plan” for roads.

The supervisors ordered the county Environmental Management Agency to return within 90 days with a list of key roads in unincorporated areas of the southern part of the county that can be built or improved in the next three years.

The county already has long-range plans for freeways and other traffic improvements, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said.

‘Best Bang Out of Buck’

But Vasquez said he and Supervisor Thomas F. Riley “believe that there is an unmet need” for a short-range program that would focus on road widenings, gap closures and highway links in unincorporated areas of southern Orange County.

“We want to be able to identify priorities and get the best bang out of our buck, given our limitations these days as it relates to transportation funding,” Vasquez said.

Vasquez said he and Riley want EMA to see what roads are needed and which ones are too expensive, environmentally bad or otherwise unfeasible.

EMA should provide a list of those that can be built so the supervisors can pick “a few select projects that could be implemented in the next three years,” Vasquez said.

In a joint letter to fellow supervisors, Vasquez and Riley noted that there is a battle between developers seeking more buildings and opponents wanting to slow growth until traffic conditions improve.

Looming Initiative Fight

In particular, they cited the coming fight over a countywide initiative that would permit new construction only under certain conditions.

“Solutions to our traffic problems must be implemented as soon as practical,” the letter said. “Without commenting on the merits of the proposed initiative, we do not believe that we should wait until the June, 1988, ballot to proceed on an aggressive program to relieve existing traffic congestion.”

Tom Rogers, a San Juan Capistrano rancher who was instrumental in drawing up the slow-growth initiative, said the supervisors’ action was “about 15 years too late.”

Rogers said he believes that the supervisors hope that if they can embark on a three-year road-building program, “it will present some sort of a psychological impediment” to the initiative that he and others hope to qualify for the June ballot.

The initiative went to the printers Wednesday, Rogers said. Its backers must collect 66,000 signatures in the county to put it on the ballot. Collecting more signatures in the county’s cities can also put it on the ballot for application in individual cities.

Far-Reaching Measure

Sponsors said if the initiative passes, it will be the most far-reaching in a series of measures to control growth in communities throughout the state.

The initiative would set specific standards of traffic flow on streets and establish minimum fire and police department response times before a developer could obtain a building permit. If traffic conditions were so bad that the standards could not be met, the permit would not be issued.

In their letter, and at the supervisors’ meeting, Riley and Vasquez pointed to a series of actions taken by the board in recent months to try to lessen the county’s traffic problems.

In Riley’s district, which runs along the coast to the San Diego County border, gaps in the Moulton Parkway and the Street of the Golden Lantern will be filled, even if land fronting on those gaps is not immediately developed.

In Vasquez’s district, covering the southeastern part of the county, a new program requires that roads be built before development occurs in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains.

Riley said the three-year action plan would give the county a chance to “address the (traffic) circulation crisis in south Orange County.”

Riley Offering Solution

After the vote, Riley said although he is “reminded of it every day,” the initiative was “categorically not” the inspiration for Wednesday’s action.

“I am not about to get into a . . . contest with those people who feel that the initiative offers solutions to all problems,” Riley said. “I am going to offer a solution, which the initiative does not, to the problems.”

Still, Riley said if the public perceives that the supervisors are acting to solve traffic problems and that development provides money for solutions while the initiative would end the cash flow, “it would be foolish not to think that it is affecting people’s thinking” about the desirability of the initiative.