Last Hearing Begins Monday : Finally, Drivers to Testify About O.C. Traffic Plan

Orange County motorists will have their first--and perhaps last--chance Monday to testify about an ambitious 20-year plan to improve traffic and manage growth that would be paid for partly by a half-cent sales tax.

The final hearing on the plan and tax--the first proposed since voters soundly rejected a 1-cent sales tax increase for transportation 5 years ago--will be at the County Hall of Administration in Santa Ana.

The plan is designed to reduce traffic congestion to 1983-84 levels. The transportation package includes restraints on growth as well as a specific list of road improvement projects--elements not in the 1984 proposal that voters turned down by a 2-to-1 margin.

Traffic congestion is the county’s No. 1 problem, according to public opinion surveys, and emotions run high about how best to fight it.

In recent weeks, for example, a homeowners’ group picketed the California Department of Transportation in an unsuccessful bid to have car-pool lanes opened to all vehicles. A group of rail transit advocates campaigned strongly against allowing commercial development on a weedy, trackless old Pacific Electric trolley line right-of-way in Garden Grove. And this week, a member of a citizens group advising county officials walked out of a meeting in protest of proposed bus and rail projects.

Critics of the sales-tax plan, Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) among them, believe the plan is “pie in the sky” and reflects “bureaucrats’ wishful thinking.”

Frizzelle, noting the plan’s heavy reliance on exclusive lanes for buses and car pools, said it contains “things urban designers dream about but which most people will never use or see.”

Supporters see no other remedy for the county’s worsening traffic.

“I’m looking out my office window at traffic on the San Diego Freeway. It’s completely stopped,” said California Transportation Commission member and former county supervisor Bruce Nestande, now an executive with Arnel Development Co., in a recent interview. “Unless people support a plan like this, they will have to reconcile themselves to sitting in that traffic.”

Plan Required by Law

Orange County is the only urban county in California without such a tax. Under state law, a transportation plan must be adopted before voters can be asked to approve a transportation sales tax.

The tax would generate $3.1 billion over 20 years. Proceeds would be used to help pay for implementing the 20-year plan. The total cost of traffic improvements would be would be $11.6 billion. About $1.3 billion of the sales tax revenue would be earmarked for freeway projects; street and transit projects would get $900 million each.

The proposal calls for much of the tax revenue to go toward speeding up the completion of the Santa Ana Freeway widening project, in which the number of lanes is being doubled from six to 12, and toward additional lanes (most for car pools) on the Orange, Costa Mesa, Riverside and San Diego freeways.

The street money would be used by individual cities to synchronize traffic signals and make road repairs and improvements. The new transit projects would include at least two new commuter trains on the Los Angeles-San Diego route through Orange County, possibly the establishment of commuter rail service between Riverside and Irvine. Transit money would also provide the initial funding for some experimental automated “people mover” systems, elevated light-rail systems such as the one now being considered in Anaheim.

To prevent traffic from becoming worse, no city would be eligible for the tax revenue unless it adopted a strict growth management plan.

Commission members will hear sharply divergent views at Monday’s hearing, which comes after public workshops, surveys, the formation of a citizens task force and meetings with community organizations in an attempt to reach a public consensus.

The testimony is expected to include:

- Protests from groups critical of the plan’s heavy reliance on additional car-pool lanes. Dana W. Reed, a Costa Mesa lawyer who serves as the public-at-large member of the county commission, says he will resist any attempt to scuttle car-pool projects. “There is no way we can build enough lanes for everybody to ride the freeway at 55 m.p.h. during rush hour,” he argues. “People will have to double up.”

- Suggestions from the Transportation Commission’s own citizens advisory task force that more transit dollars be put toward commuter trains on the Los Angeles-San Clemente line rather than toward so-called feeder lines--such as Anaheim’s people mover system or Irvine’s planned monorail project. “The real problem is that there is not enough funding to do what’s in the plan, and we prefer a more realistic approach,” says James Brooks of Irvine, a task force member.

- Criticism that provisions for enforcing cities’ adherence to growth controls in the plan are too weak, a suggestion that the members of a citizens’ oversight panel, that has been proposed be elected rather than appointed, and a demand that projects be ranked by priority so that voters can see which have the first call on tax proceeds. “We’d like to see a project priority list narrowed very rapidly,” says Russ Burkett of Orange County Tomorrow, a slow-growth group.

Without an elected citizens’ oversight panel, argues Tom Rogers of Citizens Against Unfair Taxation, the same people responsible for creating today’s traffic mess will control proceeds from the transportation sales tax.

Complaints from Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young, and from possibly others, that the growth control provisions affecting cities are too restrictive. Young argues that if residents believe a city is not living up to the plan’s growth management standards, they should take the matter to court.

- Proposals from a new group, the Foundation for Consensus in Transportation, to establish annual independent financial and management audits, a citizens’ oversight committee “with substantial powers to accommodate citizen input and review,” a consolidation of county transportation agencies, and “a financing mechanism to acquire additional open space and upgrade present recreational areas.” The group is chaired by Reed L. Royalty , Pacific Bell’s area vice president.

The “financing mechanism,” Royalty says, could be the $235-million open-space bond act proposed by Elizabeth Brown, president of Laguna Greenbelt Inc., one of the county’s most influential environmental groups. Brown is on the executive committee of Royalty’s foundation.

Voters in Contra Costa County approved a similar open-space bond measure (for $225 million) as well as a half-cent transportation sales tax last November. Sponsors of both measures helped each other as part of a quid pro quo.

Some commission members said Friday that a vote on adoption of the 20-year plan may be postponed 2 weeks if testimony is not completed on Monday or if fine tuning of the document is necessary.

The Transportation Commission staff has been preparing for a Nov. 7 special election. But under state law, the commission must first adopt the 20-year plan, and it must be ratified by a majority of the city councils representing most of the county’s population as well as by the Board of Supervisors.

The supervisors have until Aug. 8 to order the printing of ballots.

Monday’s meeting begins at 9 a.m. in the Hearing Room of the County Hall of Administration in the Civic Center in Santa Ana.

ANTICIPATED BENEFITS OF HALF-CENT TAX

These are some of the projects that the Orange County Transportation Commission suggests might be undertaken with passage of a half-cent tax measure:

Ten-year earlier completion of rebuilding the Santa Ana Freeway from the Los Angeles County line to the San Diego Freeway.

Rebuilding the interchange of the Santa Ana Freeway with the San Diego Freeway at the El Toro Y.

Adding lanes to the San Diego Freeway in southern Orange County, the Riverside Freeway throughout the county, the Orange Freeway from the Los Angeles County line to the Santa Ana Freeway, and adding a lane to the Costa Mesa Freeway between the Riverside Freeway and the Santa Ana Freeway.

Building a 220-mile network of “Super Streets” on Orange County’s 21 busiest streets.

Expanding Los Angeles-to-San Diego rail service.

Coordinating traffic signals throughout the county.

Requiring every city and the county to adopt a comprehensive growth management plan to link traffic relief and planned future development.

Source: Orange County Transportation Commission