Portion of Foothill Route May Be First County Toll Project

A section of the Foothill Transportation Corridor through Rancho Santa Margarita may be built as the county’s first tollway project, officials said Thursday.

Last year, county officials designated the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor through Laguna Hills as the first tollway project. But a new opportunity arose to construct part of the Foothill project first because of an existing, related road improvement project in the foothill area, officials said.

John Meyer, executive director of the Eastern-Foothill and San Joaquin Transportation Corridor Agencies, said construction of a four-lane version of the Foothill tollway could start later this year under a plan approved by the agencies’ board, which met Thursday in Irvine.

Credits Would Be Granted

The plan would grant landowners in the Rancho Santa Margarita area credits against developer fees that the landowners owe his agency, Meyer said. In return, the developers would donate rights of way and finance construction of a four-lane arterial that the county already had planned to build along the Foothill tollway route.

The four-lane arterial project is part of a previous agreement between landowners, principally the Santa Margarita Co., and the Board of Supervisors. Known as the Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan, the agreement calls for developers in the foothill areas to finance road improvements before their new housing projects are completed.

Meyer said the arterial would be designed to be easily converted into a wider turnpike later. He added that new, high-technology methods would be tried out first on the arterial before they are used on the 8- to 10-lane San Joaquin Hills project. “This gives us a chance to work all the bugs out on a stretch of highway that won’t handle that much traffic for a while,” he said.

Meyer has proposed using electronic scanners that would identify vehicles and bill motorists later for using the tollways. Similar technology is being used in Europe.