A SPECIAL REPORT ON TRANSPORTATION : CONCRETE SOLUTIONS : EXPERTS KEEP COMING BACK TO THE BASICS--MORE ROADS

Along the coast looms a 40-story building. The top 20 floors house apartments, with outdoor high-rise “parks” overlooking the ocean. And the bottom 20 floors include office space, restaurants and theaters.

A sleek and silent monorail that whisks riders to a similar “activity center” near Disneyland passes through one of the lower floors. Not that we don’t still do some traveling on highways but much of that takes place in electric cars driven almost bumper-to-bumper at high speeds by computers. This is one picture that Orange County transportation experts describe when asked about their long-range plans to solve traffic tie-ups.

But long range is at least 40 years away. More immediately--in the next 20 years, for instance--the solutions being pursued by local transit officials are almost all of the concrete variety--as in pavement. Orange County planners hope to build about $20 billion worth of new roads and transit services by the year 2010.

Planners figure that they will be about $8 billion short of that amount, however. So within the next few years, Orange County residents are probably going to be asked to pay more taxes for new roads.

Times staff writers Dave Lesher and Jeffery A. Perlman spoke to six transit experts to get their views on solutions to Orange County traffic. Here are, in their own words, their outlooks.

Frank E. Hotchkiss

Hotchkiss is an architect, futurist and director of regional strategic planning for the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

As the region continues its very rapid growth, a key to avoiding gridlock is the job-housing balance, so that more people can live closer to where they work. This would help traffic flow more smoothly, cut pollution, and save time and money for everyone.

Basically, housing in Orange County is being built for middle- and upper-income people. To improve balance, the county could slow down its commercial growth or provide some of the wealth that it’s getting to cities and counties that do provide the housing. Or the public and private sector could build more housing. Or Orange County could subsidize some housing through strategies such as density bonuses, redevelopment or fees on commercial development.

I understand that most people don’t want high-density development in their community. But with good management we can have good communities and a workable region.

In the future, there will be more mixed-use development--housing units mixed with offices and retail--partly to reduce daily trips. People also will telecommute (work at home with computers connected to their offices), or teleconference and buy things from their home computers and their television screens. High-speed ground transportation (trains) may be built. We may see more commuter flights by short- and vertical-takeoff aircraft. In the distant future, we may see electrified cars guided by computers on automated roadbeds. . . .

You have to remember that there are places like Tokyo where some people commute a couple of hours. And in the Third World there are places like Mexico City that put up with conditions that are a lot worse than we’re going to have. I don’t know where the balance tips, but Orange County could still get a lot worse and still be a strong attraction.

James Reichert

Reichert is director of the Orange County Transit District.

People are going to have to change their habits. What we’re trying to do is get what we call better packaging, more people in vehicles. Some people say what’s the solution? . . . They go to Disneyland and see the monorail and they say that’s the solution. But there’s no magic solution. There are, however, partial solutions. And really, when you get down to it, that’s the solution: car-pooling, van-pooling, telecom- muting, staggered work hours, bicycling, skateboarding, roller-skating, walking.

There will also be more high-rises. Visualize a high-rise that is 20 stories and the first 10 stories are offices and businesses and the top 10 stories are apartments. . . . You will have developed right there in this activity center a little community (and) people will be closer to where they are working so they won’t have to take so many trips. People (favoring slow growth) say: “We don’t want to have high density because that will bring more vehicles.” And it will. So they say let’s spread it out. Well, if they spread it out, that’s going to guarantee that everybody is going to have one person per car.

Then people might not buy their own car anymore. They might need a vehicle and they will go to the building that rents cars and it would probably be one of these vertical parking structures. You put your credit card in the slot and pull a lever and a car comes down. . . . I think as you really get into the future, (methods of transit) can be electronically controlled . . . with a guidance system in the pavement. Press a button and say, “I want to go wherever,” and the computer will take you there.

So, when you ask in 20 years if it’s going to be better or worse, it depends on how much (money) you’re going to put in now. A half-cent sales tax will not keep us in pace with the increase in travel. A penny sales tax will probably keep us at about the level where we are now. We’re doing a lot of educating and laying the basis for better packaging, and the rest of the things will evolve out of that.

Raymond Catalano

Catalano is an urban planning professor at UC Irvine and was a proponent of last June’s countywide slow-growth initiative.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the traffic situation is going to get considerably worse in Orange County. The future of transportation is relatively bleak. . . . What you have now is the best that it’s going to be under any scenario for the next 25 years.

Orange County has . . . 7.12 miles of road per square mile of land area. There is no other county in California that has more. The motivation for the slow-growth movement is (that) to build out . . . is just going to drive these numbers higher. We are not only facing the simple problem of finding money to build roads. There is the larger problem: Do we want an Orange County that is dominated by transportation facilities?

What are the alternatives? One is to find a different way to move people through space (such as car pools or mass transit), which I personally don’t have much hope for. I think people will just move someplace else before they will change. The other category of solutions has to do with uses of space. . . . You have to do what we’re doing in Irvine, which is to try to tie specific neighborhoods to specific work opportunities.

If, for example, you live in Westpark, the Irvine Co. will have (private) roads connecting it to the Irvine Business Park. Why is that important? Because if you buy a home in Westpark, you should be assured that if it takes 15 minutes to get to the park, then in 20 years it will still take 15 minutes.

Human nature is such that it always believes it can act to change the future. But what we have open to us now (is that) we can act now to make the future less bad than it will be if we don’t act. There’s nothing we can do now to make the future better. If the people in Orange County were smart they would put up the 1-cent sales tax so it won’t get even worse. But it’s going to be hard enough to get the half-cent sales tax.

Larry Parrish

Parrish is the Orange County administrative officer, the highest-ranking executive in county government.

I’m optimistic that we’ll solve the problems, but in the short range, we’re probably going to have more congestion than we have now. I think the county is doing all that it is able to do. But to really solve the problem, we’re going to need some revenues that are not now available.

I think this is a situation that is already at a high point of attention in the average commuter’s mind. We probably need to consider a measure with a half-cent sales tax. We’re surrounded by counties that have that. . . . I think the voter is probably as close to readiness as they’re going to get. People in this county are going to have to look at some form of tax increase whether they can read lips or not. The fact is, it takes a near epidemic of some proportion before people will make some of (the needed) changes.

I’m not gifted in the way of the future. There are people who are attracted to it. If they do come to pass, fine. But since I’ve been a child, we’ve read about fuel-free cars that run on a tablet or cars that go 50 miles and you plug them in. This hasn’t happened. Right now, the cars are on the road. It really doesn’t matter what powers the vehicle when people get into them. People still dream about monorails. I don’t know if those things are ever going to happen. But I know long before those things are available, we’re going to need some more pavement.

For better or worse, (government has) contributed to our lack of credibility problems. . . . The key private-sector people in this community and the people who felt so strongly about (the slow-growth) measure (are going to have to) conclude with their experience and credibility that this (sales tax) is not a panacea that some bureaucrat has come up with in a knee-jerk way. That’s not what we do, but I know people think that’s what we do.

Genevieve Giuliano

Giuliano is associate professor of urban and regional planning at USC. An Irvine resident, she is former assistant director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Irvine.

Twenty or 30 years from now, we will still have individual-based transportation for the most part, with computerized technology. That may mean at some time that we have automated roadways. It may mean we’ll have small, personal vehicles that could link up trainlike with other, similar vehicles that would be used, especially during commute hours.

But you will have other vehicles for other travel. We know that the number of vehicle registrations per household is rising all the time. There’s already a tendency toward ownership of multiple types of specialized vehicles.

Building more freeways in populated areas is not an option anymore. Caltrans used to have a plan for a project, and there would be state and federal money, and freeways would just get built. But now there is much more control locally, and local agencies are making more sensitive decisions.

In the future, my guess is we will see many small clusters of (residential and commercial) activity. . . . So we may see shorter travel distances.

For the most part, travel still will be individually based. That’s not my preference as a transportation planner, but it’s what I see in people’s behavior. People get angry because they can’t get where they’re going as quickly as they used to, but most people adjust by changing their hours of work or other things. They maintain their individual mobility.

There’s no way to avoid (more taxes). From my perspective, you tax the user. We should have a user-financed transportation system. You tax the cars, the drivers and the fuel, even though that doesn’t generate as much revenue as a sales tax.

If you want people to behave rationally, you have to introduce pricing related to the actual cost of travel by private automobile, and that includes imposing parking fees. The planned toll roads in Orange County are a step in the right direction.

Bruce Nestande

A former county supervisor, Nestande is a vice president of Arnel Development Co. in Costa Mesa and a member of the state Transportation Commission.

I think things are bad enough now--the crisis is here. I think the solutions are there politically also--if people will take some political risk and go out and push these issues.

The needs can easily be quantified. Saying that, what do we need? We need . . . countywide transportation authorities, so a single entity will be able to plan whether it’s Katella (Avenue) or Lincoln or Beach (boulevards) from beginning to end. . . . That’s part of the solution; the other part is the three new (south county freeway) corridors; they have to get on a tighter time frame.

You can’t do these corridors without having multiple-revenue streams coming in (like the sales tax). Having been in public office, to go out and try to quantify (the need to) raise money for education, or raise money . . . for welfare or other programs, it’s very hard to quantify . . . that certain things will happen because of this. But I can sit down and show you lane miles that can be done and road improvements that can occur and what is available right now from given sources and what needs to be gotten.

I argued to have a half-cent sales tax on the ballot this November. People know this has to be done. We’ve been studying this thing for years. My attitude is, go out and put that issue on the ballot every two years and talk to people about it and sell the thing. And if it doesn’t happen one year, it will happen the next one.

I have to be--and I am--optimistic. . . . I have described what I know has to take place. I can state categorically that if what I’ve described doesn’t occur, then Orange County is not going to be a very nice place to live. I’ll tell you--to equate it to something we all understand in Orange County, surfing--we are at the crest of the wave. And if we don’t stay on top and get ahead of it, then we’re going to fall off. So there’s a lot of ifs, but I have to say that it can be done.

FANTASIZING THE FUTURE

SUPER STREETS--Thirteen so-called “super-streets” have been suggested for the county at a projected cost of $193 million. They would eliminate bottlenecks at congested intersections through bus turnouts and other turn pockets, removal of on-street parking, signal coordination and other projects.

MONORAIL--Monorails, like the one that circles Disneyland, have long been discussed. Now, a monorail connecting John Wayne Airport with an off-site office complex is in the planning stages. It has already been approved by the County Airport Commission and Board of Supervisors.

DOUBLE-DECKER FREEWAYS--Just as the name implies, a second deck would be built over an existing freeway, with one direction flowing on each deck. A 20-year traffic plan unveiled in September did not call for any double-decker freeways in the county.

ROUNDABOUTS--Also called traffic circles, roundabouts are common at major intersections in England and elsewhare in Europe and eliminate the need for traffic lights, theoretically allowing a smoother traffic flow. A 100-year-old example can be seen in downtown Orange.