SCAG Urged to Redo Transportation Plan to Cover County Projects

State and federal funding for key Orange County transportation projects could be lost unless a regional planning agency rewrites a controversial, 20-year improvement plan, county officials said Monday.

Meeting in Santa Ana, the Orange County Transportation Commission voted 7 to 0 to ask the six-county Southern California Assn. of Governments to redraft its proposed Regional Mobility Plan to include several projects now left out of the 20-year plan, such as the widening of the Garden Grove and Orange freeways, and commuter rail service between Orange and Riverside counties.

Legally, officials said, such improvements can’t be funded with state and federal grants unless they are consistent with the spirit of SCAG’s regional plan, which emphasizes getting people to use cars less and live closer to their jobs.

“This is not at the point of seriousness yet because this is only a draft plan, and we’re still negotiating,” Commissioner Clarice A. Blamer said following Monday’s meeting. “But if the final plan is issued and these concerns aren’t addressed, I’m going to be very unhappy.”

Chances Are ‘Good’

Jim Gosnell, a SCAG transportation planner, said the chances are “pretty good” that the projects will be in the final SCAG proposal, due in November.

“In fact, we’ve already asked each (county transportation) commission to give us a recommended list of projects” for inclusion in the plan, he said. “We know in general that we need a lot more facilities than are currently programmed for funding.”

SCAG’s draft plan excludes several projects proposed by the commission partly because the plan emphasizes efforts to change commuter behavior, including significantly increased use of mass transit and having workers live closer to their jobs.

Implementing the draft plan regionally would cost an estimated $42 billion over the next 20 years, with 80% of the money spent on capital projects--mostly mass transit.

Corridors Included

However, the plan does call for building the San Joaquin Hills, Foothill and Eastern transportation corridors, as well as adding one mixed-flow lane in each direction of the Santa Ana Freeway, from the San Diego Freeway interchange in Irvine to the Garden Grove Freeway interchange in Santa Ana.

The draft plan also proposes car pool lanes in each direction on the San Joaquin Hills corridor and the Santa Ana, San Diego, Costa Mesa and Riverside freeways. Moreover, the plan calls for commuter rail service between San Clemente and Los Angeles.

But the commission would like several other items added to the SCAG list: improvements to Beach Boulevard; two new, regular freeway lanes--rather than one--in each direction of the Santa Ana Freeway south of the Garden Grove Freeway; one new, regular lane in each direction on the Garden Grove, Costa Mesa and Orange freeways; one additional car-pool lane in each direction of the Orange Freeway, and commuter rail service between Orange and Riverside counties.

OCTC officials also said Monday that SCAG’s projected means of financing the projects in the draft plan--increases in gasoline and sales taxes and developer fees--are overly ambitious because of near-certain political opposition.

Moreover, commission members said that SCAG’s emphasis on having employees live closer to their jobs was based on overly optimistic goals and that its 20-year population growth figures were too high and inconsistent with the state’s forecasts.

But SCAG’s Gosnell said the emphasis on demand management--increasing transit usage and moving employees and work sites closer together--is realistic and fiscally necessary. “If we don’t have that kind of demand management,” he said, “we’re going to need a lot more facilities than even Orange County wants to add to the list.”