Countywide : Panel Recommends Route for 1st Toll Road

As expected, a 15-member transportation study group Friday voted unanimously to recommend that the San Joaquin Hills Corridor between Irvine and San Juan Capistrano become the state’s first toll road.

The recommendation will be taken up Oct. 12 by the Orange County Transportation Commission, which will make its choice known to the California Transportation Commission. If approved by the state commission, the roadway would become eligible to compete for 35% federal funding as a toll road pilot project.

The study group also voted unanimously to recommend that federal legislation be sought that would allow the San Joaquin corridor and two other Orange County corridors--the Foothill and the Eastern--to be considered a single $1.3-billion beltway for federal funding purposes. Federal law now provides that the commission be able to recommend only one toll road route for federal funding. The 17-mile Eastern Corridor would run from the Riverside Freeway in Yorba Linda to Interstate 5 in Irvine. The 32-mile Foothill Corridor connects the Eastern Corridor east of Irvine to I-5 in San Clemente.

As part of its recommendation, the study group also requested that money from the toll roads, if built, be allowed to be transferred among the three corridors.

OCTC Executive Director Stan Oftelieq said the reason for that request is that the committee wanted to keep the three toll roads “on the same footing.”

Commission Chairwoman Clarice Blamer said the unanimous vote was “a real barometer of what’s happening in the county. People of different opinions are joining together to solve the transportation problems facing Orange County.”