OCTC Loses Round in Its Bid to Widen Laguna Canyon Rd.

Dealing a blow to the Orange County Transportation Commission’s effort to force the widening of Laguna Canyon Road, a state Assembly committee Wednesday rejected legislation that would have deleted a portion of the road from the state highway system.

The legislative maneuver by the OCTC--carried in a bill by Assemblyman Richard Longshore (R-Santa Ana)--was meant to send a simple message to the city of Laguna Beach: Go along with plans to widen the narrow, curving road or face responsibility for maintaining the thoroughfare and defending lawsuits filed by accident victims.

But Laguna Beach officials argued successfully Wednesday that the threat to return the road to the city’s jurisdiction was a “heavy-handed” move and represented unwarranted punishment for the city’s refusal to acquiesce in the state’s plans to widen the scenic road to four lanes.

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee vote, which removed the Laguna Canyon Road provisions, stopped the legislation one step short of the Assembly floor. The full Assembly will consider the bill, which now calls for removing only Beach Boulevard, from Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach to Whittier Boulevard in La Habra--from the state freeway and expressway system. Previous freeway plans for Beach Boulevard were abandoned many years ago.

The Laguna Canyon Road issue now returns to the jurisdiction of the California Coastal Commission, which already has rejected the road-widening proposal but is scheduled to reconsider the issue at a meeting next week.

Dennis Carpenter, Sacramento lobbyist for the OCTC, indicated after Wednesday’s vote that talks between the commission and the city may yet produce a compromise that would improve safety on the road without a full-scale widening.

“There are some delicate negotiations under way, and I think they’ll bear fruit,” he said.

Carpenter, a former state senator from Orange County, presented the bill before the panel because Longshore was ill.

Carpenter argued that the state should delete the road--California 133--from the highway network because Laguna Beach has blocked efforts to widen it for several years. The city has contended that the state’s plan to widen the road from two lanes to four near the “Big Bend” curve would damage the environment without necessarily making the road any safer.

Thirty-six people have died on the road in the past 11 years; nine of those deaths have been on the stretch Caltrans wants to widen.

“It’s a winding road,” Carpenter said. “It’s a killer road. . . . There is no reason why the county or the state should be the responsible party for not fixing the road. We’re ready to do it now.”

But Mayor Dan Kenney said the city is more than willing to make the road safer. “The city of Laguna Beach is very much interested in the safety of that canyon,” he said. “We are also interested in preserving some of the bucolic atmosphere of that canyon. We want safety, but we don’t want it at the expense of what OCTC and Caltrans have tried to shove down our throats.”

The bill was amended at the request of Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), who said he wanted to give the city a chance to work out an agreement with the OCTC.

“You probably think that after 15 years they deserve this,” Ferguson said of the move to punish the city. “But I don’t think the people deserve it. Maybe the City Council does.”