San Joaquin Is Likely Choice for First Toll Road

With an Orange County citizens committee set to recommend a route today for the state’s first toll road, county officials say factors beyond the committee’s control make the San Joaquin Hills Corridor between Irvine and San Juan Capistrano the likely choice.

But the same officials say it also is likely that toll roads eventually will be built in the Foothill Corridor between north Tustin and San Clemente and in the Eastern Corridor between Yorba Linda and East Irvine.

A measure allowing toll roads to be built in Orange County was passed this month in the final hours of the Legislature’s 1987 session, and Congress has authorized 35% federal funding for one toll road demonstration project in the county.

Single Solution

Now, a plan is afoot to seek a change in the federal law that would allow toll roads in the San Joaquin Hills Corridor, the Foothill Corridor and the Eastern Corridor to be considered a single, $1.3-billion beltway for funding purposes.

Advocated by Orange County Transportation Commission member Richard Edgar and Irvine Co. transportation planner Hugh Fitzpatrick, the beltway plan is based on a theory that the three corridors are a single solution to the same goal: relieving congestion on three freeways. Two of them, the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways, are part of the federal interstate system, and the third, the Costa Mesa Freeway, has made use of federal funding in the past.

“This idea goes a long way towards eliminating competition between the three routes,” Edgar said at a meeting of a toll road technical advisory group at the Orange County Transportation Commission offices. “And that’s important because there are many people who prefer the Eastern or the Foothill because it relieves traffic in more of their communities.”

The San Joaquin Hills Corridor passes mostly through unincorporated county territory.

When the 15-member citizens committee meets today to recommend the first toll road route, it will have to contend with two major developments:

- The Federal Highway Administration sent a letter to county transportation officials on July 17 that has been interpreted to mean the administration favors the San Joaquin Hills route. That letter, from Deputy Administrator Robert E. Harris, said there is no time limit for construction of the toll road demonstration project but added: “Obviously, though, from the standpoint of a pilot program, the phrase, ‘the sooner, the better,’ sums up the situation. We would prefer a corridor that can go to construction relatively soon.”

- Demonstration projects in the California Transportation Commission’s 1988 five-year transportation improvement program are being negotiated right now, with fierce competition for scarce state funds. “Based on the construction schedules for the three corridors,” states a county Transportation Commission staff report, “only the San Joaquin Hills Corridor can begin construction” quickly enough to be included.

The Foothill and Eastern routes are not yet included in the state and federal highway systems, and they therefore are currently ineligible for regular state or federal highway funding.

Panel’s Members

Members of the citizens advisory panel are state Sens. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) and Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), Assemblymen Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) and Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), former UC Riverside Chancellor Ivan Hinderaker, OCTC Chairwoman Clarice Blamer, Newport Beach Mayor John Cox, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, Caltrans District 12 Director Keith McKean, California Transportation Commission member Bruce Nestande, Building Industry Assn. Executive Director John Erskine, developer Barry Hon, Mission Viejo Co. Vice President Van Stevens, Santa Margarita Co. Vice President Tom Blum and Irvine Co. Vice President Monica Florian.

“The San Joaquin is going to be ready first, therefore it’s logical to build it first,” said the Irvine Co.’s Fitzpatrick. “There’s an old engineer’s saw that says, ‘Just let me get the project ready to be built, and the money will appear.’ That happened with Metro Rail (the Los Angeles subway project).”

Construction is scheduled to begin on the 15-mile San Joaquin Hills route, part of which is already graded, in mid-1990. Construction is not scheduled to begin on the 13- to 17-mile Eastern Corridor until mid-1993. Construction of the middle segment of the three-part, 32-mile Foothill Corridor is scheduled to get under way in 1992, but construction on the northern and southern sections will not begin until mid-1995.

$1,300 Per Housing Unit

Developer fees are expected to cover 48% of the construction costs, based on an average fee of about $1,300 per new housing unit. Those fees will be passed on to home buyers through higher sales prices. Tolls are projected to provide another 17% to 39%, and officials hope that state and federal funds will cover the rest.

So far, about $11 million in developer fees, including interest, has been collected for the San Joaquin Hills Corridor. A total of about $13.3 million has been collected for the Foothill and Eastern corridors, which are administered as one program.

More cities are involved with the Eastern and Foothill projects, so they tend to favor the Eastern Corridor as a toll road project because of the need for quick relief for the heavily congested Costa Mesa Freeway.

But Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young, a member of the transportation agencies overseeing the three corridor projects, said most officials are “sophisticated enough to know that picking one of the corridors for tolls right now in no way precludes the others from being built, on the same construction schedule they’re on now. . . .

“We feel very strongly that we need to make sure that we proceed at the earliest possible date on all three corridors. We’re trying to avoid all attempts to create any competition. There has been a cooperative spirit.”

Preference Denied

Fitzpatrick denied that Irvine Co. officials prefer the San Joaquin Hills route for the first toll-road project because of the firm’s plans for developing the Irvine Coast. He said the Eastern Corridor would benefit company projects just as much, if not more.

Interviews with officials of the three major landowners affected by the routes--Irvine Co., Santa Margarita Co. and Mission Viejo Co.--suggest that selection of one route over another for the toll experiment would not significantly affect their development plans. They point out that there are plans to build all three highways regardless of whether they are toll roads.

A toll road in the San Joaquin Hills Corridor would be expected to divert about 30,000 cars a day off other freeways and major arterial highways.

As a non-toll facility, it would handle 169,000 trips daily in 1995, according to a study commissioned by the Irvine Co. A 25-cent toll would result in a drop to 133,000 trips daily, and a 75-cent toll would reduce volume to only 41,000 trips daily, according to the study.

Similar findings have been made in connection with the feasibility of toll roads in the Eastern and Foothill corridors.

A county study showed last year that charging eight to 10 cents a mile on the Eastern Corridor would mean an average cost of $1 per trip and would come close to paying the construction cost of the entire project, when combined with developer fees.

Tolls Must Come Off

The new state law giving Orange County the authority to have toll roads requires that the tolls must come off when construction costs are paid off.

The county’s Transportation Corridor Agencies--a consortium of city and county officials formed under joint powers agreements--will actually run the toll roads, and its members could overrule any recommendation by the citizens advisory committee on route selection. Most observers, however, believe that is unlikely.

Some people--including Seymour and Frizzelle--believe that the rush to designate the San Joaquin Hills Corridor as the first toll road project may be a mistake.

Seymour has said he favors the Eastern Corridor because it would relieve traffic in more communities.

Frizzelle sent aide Jim Orr to a recent county Transportation Commission technical advisory committee meeting to voice his concern about “selling” toll roads to the public.

“The assemblyman has some concerns that the San Joaquin will not be successful” because it might cut time but not miles off a trip on the parallel San Diego Freeway, Orr said. “That would be a (public relations) disaster.”