Traffic Improvement Plan : Hopes for O.C. Tax Hike Pinned on Fed-Up Drivers

Orange County transportation officials are banking on the willingness of frustrated commuters, faced with choking traffic and urban sprawl, to pay a little extra for some relief.

The Orange County Transportation Commission is trying to sell the voters on paying for 20 years’ worth of major traffic improvements. The commission earlier this month approved an $11.6-billion plan that would be partly funded by a half-cent county sales tax, which would have to be approved by a majority of the county’s voters in a special countywide election that could be held as soon as Nov. 7.

The levy, which would raise the sales tax from 6 cents to 6 1/2 cents, would generate $3.1 billion, costing individual taxpayers $50 to $75 a year for 20 years, officials estimate. The remaining $8.5 billion for the 20-year plan is expected to come from existing state, federal and local revenue.

Most of the proceeds from the half-cent sales tax would be used to complete the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway by 1998 instead of 2008, start new commuter train service, convert 21 congested boulevards into streamlined “super streets,” synchronize traffic signals, add car-pool lanes to existing freeways and repair local roads.

But Orange County voters, by a 2 1/2-to-1 ratio, rejected Proposition A, a 1-cent sales tax for transportation improvements in June, 1984. What has changed since then to make transportation officials think voters will approve such a tax? And what would the sales tax buy that Orange County wouldn’t get otherwise?

The answers, say political strategists, will determine whether Orange County will remain the only urban county in the state without a sales tax to fund transportation projects.

To be sure, some things have changed since 1984:

- The proposed levy has been cut in half, from a penny to a half-penny sales tax.

- All three surrounding counties--Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego--now have half-cent sales taxes to fund traffic improvements.

- More than 310,000 vehicles have been added to the county’s crammed streets and freeways since 1984, raising the total to 1.96 million vehicles as of Dec. 31, 1988.

- Congestion has worsened dramatically, despite expenditures totaling more than $1 billion for traffic improvements since Proposition A’s defeat. Traffic delays in Orange County are now worse than those in Los Angeles, according to a regional study.

- Many voters saw Proposition A as a boon to developers in southern Orange County, where three new freeways were planned. But this year’s planned tax measure, which does not yet have a ballot title, bars use of the tax proceeds to accommodate new growth and contains some of the traffic-flow standards and growth controls sought by slow-growth activists.

Moreover, the three freeways for eastern and southern Orange County are now being planned as mostly self-financed tollways and are not included in the 20-year traffic improvement plan.

- In addition to street and freeway improvements, the proposal 5 years ago would have funded a controversial, billion-dollar light-rail line linking Fullerton with Irvine with stops at several shopping centers and John Wayne Airport. The rail system is not included in the current plan.

However, the new 20-year plan does include additional train service along the Santa Ana Freeway between Los Angeles and several stops in Orange County and the first rail passenger service between Riverside and Irvine. Both lines are along two corridors that contain most of the county’s jobs.

- A new citizens’ watchdog committee would monitor compliance with the 20-year plan, although the League of Cities and slow-growth advocates are still arguing over how to implement this feature. The League, which represents the county’s 28 cities, didn’t want such an oversight committee and was surprised when the county Transportation Commission suddenly reversed itself and accepted it.

Despite the differences in the current transportation tax measure, some activists contend that county officials and the business community, which for the most part favors the tax, have not heeded the lessons of 1984 well enough.

For example, Sacramento-based political and transportation consultant D.J. Smith has warned local officials to use a “bottoms-up” or grass-roots approach this time.

In 1984, professional planners, county officials and a small handful of “transportation junkies” virtually excluded public involvement in choosing transportation projects and organizing the political campaign for the doomed ballot measure, according to Smith. A $1.7-million pro-Proposition A campaign featuring popular Sheriff Brad Gates, who said the measure would help save lives by easing traffic for emergency vehicles, was not persuasive. In fact, such heavy involvement of public officials was counterproductive, Smith said.

Although the opposition had little more than $100,000 to spend, the 1984 tax was defeated in all but one precinct--the College Park area in north Seal Beach.

But while a series of public workshops helped shape this year’s sales tax measure, some activists complain that the same county agencies and the same business executives are running things.

“You go to these meetings, and a lot of the people you see are vice presidents of this company or that company--people who I think are paid to attend meetings,” said Elizabeth Brown, a Laguna Beach environmentalist who opposed the 1984 sales tax measure and has not taken a stand on the current proposal pending negotiations with the county over a separate park bond ballot measure.

“There is no grass-roots organization yet,” said Norm Grossman, a slow-growth advocate who helped draft the current measure but who said he is disappointed with the effort so far.

Transportation Commission Executive Director Stanley T. Oftelie disagreed.

“Plenty has changed since 1984,” he said. “The approach has been bottoms-up from Day One. I was hired in June, 1983, and by October, we had a ballot measure ready to go. That just hasn’t happened this time.”

Oftelie points to a series of seven public workshops, during which proposed transportation “solutions” were ranked according to the preferences of more than 250 people who attended. The 20-year improvement and growth management plan reflects those workshop rankings, Oftelie said.

For example, workshop participants chose the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway as the project with the highest priority, and so did transportation commissioners. In an earlier public opinion survey of 600 people countywide, the same project emerged on top. Rail transit was popular also, and the plan reflects new investment in commuter trains.

Without the proposed half-cent sales tax, Oftelie said, the $1.6-billion widening of the Santa Ana Freeway from six to 12 lanes won’t be finished for 25 years. In fact, he said, that one project is “like a sponge that will soak up almost all the state and federal highway money we get.”

Largely because the state highway fund already is overcommitted, the following Orange County projects would go unfunded, possibly for 2 decades or more:

- Completion of the widening of the Costa Mesa Freeway north of the Santa Ana Freeway interchange, due to a $200-million shortfall in current financing.

- The widening of the Riverside Freeway--a $400-million project.

- The widening of the Orange Freeway--a $40-million project.

- Most of the 21 “super street” projects.

- Riverside-to-Irvine rail service.

- Dozens of smaller, individual street widenings and repair projects.

- The $55-million reconstruction of the “El Toro Y,” the confluence of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways.

“A recurring nightmare I have is that at the same time we’re building car-pool lanes on the San Diego Freeway and six new lanes on the Santa Ana Freeway, you have to wait 25 years to finish the (El Toro Y) interchange, even though there would be eight new lanes of traffic already going into it,” Oftelie said.

“Also, we have another loaded gun at our heads. Riverside County, because it passed a half-cent sales tax, is ready to widen the Riverside Freeway right to the Orange County line. They have a right to expect that we’re not going to make all that traffic suddenly narrow down into fewer lanes at Green River, yet that freeway is not on the list of state funding priorities.”

Russ Burkett of San Juan Capistrano, who opposes the tax measure and worked against Proposition A in 1984, complained that the popularity of rail service and transit generally in surveys and workshops is misleading. “People say they like it, but when it’s built they don’t use it.”

Officials at Hughes Aircraft Co., the county’s largest employer, say that Orange County has no choice--that clean-air regulations are forcing Hughes and other businesses to promote public transit in order to meet limits on the number of people who commute alone to work each day.

Too Much Rail

Dave Ellis, the political consultant who managed the successful campaign against Proposition A in 1984, agrees with Burkett that there may be too much rail and other transit in this year’s tax measure.

But Ellis also thinks the measure could pass this time around because county officials have “done a good job of minimizing their opposition.” Although the workshops were sparsely attended, Ellis said, they served their purpose of inviting the public to participate.

Ellis said that Tom Rogers and Burkett, the two activists who led the anti-Proposition A charge in 1984, are not as influential on the sales tax issue now, partly because the Motor Car Dealers Assn., which helped finance the 1984 anti-tax effort, is staying neutral this time.

“Rogers and Burkett tend to run around claiming they have a hold on the electorate, but they don’t, at least not without $200,000,” Ellis said. “The misery index of the electorate is a lot higher. There are more cars, more people, and there’s more garbage in the air.”

Still, Ellis said, “the rail component will hurt (the measure’s chances). While it’s more thoughtful than the rail project in the 1984 plan, this county is more rooted in its cars than any other I know of.”

Also, Ellis cautioned that having the tax measure election in November, at the same time as the governor’s proposed special statewide election on a 5-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax increase, “would be the kiss of death.” Public opinion surveys show that the gasoline tax increase would be trounced in Orange County.

Although special district and school elections will involve about 60% of the households in Orange County on Nov. 7, there is no general election.

“Independently, the sales tax for transportation may be able to stand on its own,” Ellis said. “But anything else on the ballot could kill it.”

Although it’s not too late to correct public perceptions, Ellis warned that it appears that the sales tax effort so far has been disorganized.

“You’ve got to have precinct captains and community chairpersons who are regular (rank-and-file) voters,” he said. “You have to get this issue out of corporate board rooms and get it into the political vineyards.”

HALF-CENT SALES TAX

Most of the half-cent sales tax proceeds would be used to:

Complete the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway by 1998 instead of 2008.

Start a new commuter train service.

Convert 21 congested boulevards into streamlined super streets.

Synchronize traffic signals.

Add car-pool lanes to existing freeways.

Repair local roads.