Transit Agencies Approve Plan That Would Pay for Sound Walls

Long-awaited sound walls along Orange County freeways may finally begin going up as a result of a compromise reached Friday between the county’s two main transportation agencies.

To forestall a crippling raid on its $200-million reserve fund for transit-ways, the Orange County Transit District agreed to transfer $36 million from its reserve to another account whose interest will help pay for building 16 sound walls.

The nine-point agreement, which also sets aside money for design and other preliminary work on so-called “super streets,” must be approved Monday at a special joint meeting of the transit district board of directors and the Orange County Transportation Commission. Passage is considered certain, officials for both agencies said Friday.

“We want to build the sound walls in 10 years,” commission Executive Director Stan Oftelie said Friday.

The response from homeowners in the Rossmoor area of Seal Beach, who for years have fought for a sound wall along the San Gabriel River Freeway, was ecstatic.

“After 25 years of suffering this terrible, terrible decibel noise, I’m elated,” said Gus Brickman, 70, whose home borders the freeway. “We’ve had meeting after meeting and talked to anyone who would listen to us. It’s terrific.”

The proposed compromise, ratified by County Supervisor Roger Stanton and Tustin Mayor Richard P. Edgar, apparently will head off what many expected would be a raucous joint meeting Monday between the two agencies, the first held since 1980. Edgar and Stanton sit on the boards of both agencies.

The two bodies were scheduled to try to reach a consensus on a new five-year transportation plan submitted by the transit district. Under state law, such a transportation plan must have the approval of the County Transportation Commission before any money can be spent.

Points of contention included a proposal to expand the transit district’s Dial-A-Ride service and two bills in the state Legislature that would have allowed the commission to use transit district funds for building 21 “super streets” and the sound walls.

“Obviously, we were not real interested in letting them have access to those funds,” said James P. Reichert, general manager for the transit district. But rather than see the reserve funds siphoned slowly away, as the bills could have allowed, Reichert said, he agreed to the compromise.

In return, the commission agreed to ask that the bills be withdrawn and not to seek transit district reserve funds except as a last resort after other funding opportunities had been exhausted.

“We got recognition that the district has been stretched to the limits of its financial resources in terms of trying to keep the transit-ways going,” Reichert said. “I don’t see any other impact in our service or programs.”

Three years ago, the district put $84 million of its reserve money into a special account and turned over interest earned from that account to the Transportation Commission to use. The principal remains under transit district control.

According to the agreement reached Friday, the $36 million would be deposited into that account in 1990 under the same terms,

Loss of the additional interest income to the transit district would appear to jeopardize the construction timetable for its $440-million transit-way program.

Work is already under way on a transit-way along the Santa Ana Freeway between the Orange and Costa Mesa freeways. Transit-ways are lanes for buses, van pools and car pools. According to transit district plans, they eventually will cover a total of 19.4 miles along the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways.

Reichert conceded that the compromise “removes some of our flexibility.”

It would, however, allow funding for the county’s Dial-A-Ride service to remain at current service levels and for a pilot program to begin in Rancho Santa Margarita in July, he said. Dial-A-Ride provides van service on demand for $1.50 to riders in areas where buses do not run.

Bus service would not be affected, Reichert said.

By state law, interest money from the special account--which would have a total $120 million principal under the agreement--must be divided evenly for state highways and local roads.

Therefore, half will go toward the super streets.

So far, however, the county’s one experiment with a super street--along Beach Boulevard between the Imperial and Pacific Coast highways--has progressed as slowly as motorists in a rush-hour drive.

“The environmental and design process moves at glacial pace,” Oftelie said. “We’ve been talking about Beach Boulevard for two years.”

The new money would speed up the preliminary steps leading to construction for 20 other proposed super streets, Oftelie said. “We probably won’t have enough money to pay for significant amounts of construction; this money will set the stage.”

But it is the long and loud demand for sound walls that seems to have been answered at last.

California already has a waiting list of 214 such projects to be built at an estimated cost of $200 million. Twenty of those are in Orange County--with one at 202 on the state priority list.

“Everybody wants sound walls,” which are very expensive, said Keith E. McKean, state Department of Transportation director for Orange County. McKean estimates the construction costs at $500,000 a mile.

“Without this new money, some of those walls couldn’t have happened,” said transit district director Edgar. “We now have the funding.”

Sixteen of the sound walls will be built with local funds at cost of around $16.8 million, Oftelie said. When these projects rise higher on the state priority list, the county will be reimbursed for its construction costs. But that repayment process could take more than 15 years, according to a study prepared for the Transportation Commission by Deloitte, Haskins & Sells.

Four of the sound-wall projects in the county are on the state-funded list--that is, there is state money set aside for them--and are scheduled for completion within the next five years at a cost of $2.2 million, according to Caltrans.

These 20 projects, however, do not include walls that are part of interstate highway construction projects. In those cases, the walls go up as the the freeway is widened. The San Diego Freeway, for example, has 17 such sections under construction, with five others to begin soon.

Sound walls now are required on new construction along freeways and state highways that border homes and where the noise level exceeds 67 decibels. The walls are designed to cut the noise by 7 to 10 decibels, to what is considered to be the level of a normal conversation.

UNFUNDED COUNTY SOUND WALL PROJECTS

Unfunded and unscheduled soundwall projects in priority order

1988 Est. Cost Route Project Description Ranking (thousands) Rt. 91 Lakeview 50 $ 535 Rt. 57 Yorba Linda/Rolling Hills 52 1,193 Rt. 55 Walnut/Katella 54 1,870 Rt. 91 Imperial Highway 74 321 Rt. 91 Orangethorpe/Knott 81 1,518 Rt. 22 Garden Grove 83 720 Rt. 91 East St./State College 94 1,465 Rt. 91 Magnolia/Brookhurst 100 1,167 I-5 Camino de Estrella 114 188 Rt. 91 Knott/I-5 117 1,381 Rt. 22 Beach/Yockey 124 1,202 Rt. 22 Springdale/Knott 169 1,202 Rt. 57 Lambert 198 714 I-405 Seal Beach/I-605/I-405 Katella 199 1,243 Rt. 22 Brookhurst/Euclid 201 1,487 Rt. 22 Magnolia/Brookhurst 202 571 Estimated Total $16,777

Sources: Orange County Transportation Commission and Orange County Transit District