San Joaquin Tollway Adds New Car-Pool Plan, Trains

A proposed new design for the 14-mile tollway linking Newport Beach and San Juan Capistrano calls for commuter trains in the median strip, as well as Orange County’s first reversible car-pool lanes, which would route cars in either direction, depending on traffic.

The preliminary design plan for the San Joaquin Hills tollway, which still would include three regular traffic lanes in each direction, will come before the agency overseeing the $556-million project on Thursday. If approved, the ambitious proposal will become one of several designs being studied as part of the tollway’s environmental impact report.

Whether such rail service ultimately would be offered along the route would depend on the future availability of money for additional trains in Orange County.

“This will allow commuters a great deal of flexibility and addresses many of our concerns about meeting regional clean-air goals,” said Newport Beach Councilman John C. Cox Jr., chairman of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, a joint-powers authority that is overseeing the project.

‘Reversible Feature Is Beautiful’

“Not only will some people be able to use light rail, but if they are in van pools, buses or car pools, we can have them use the reversible lanes for the entire length of the corridor without making them stop at a toll booth,” Cox said. “The reversible feature is beautiful because it would allow us to (better) handle peak traffic loads.”

Ride-share vehicles would be electronically tagged so that automatic-scanning equipment could identify them and send a tollway users’ bill to the appropriate vehicle operator by mail, Cox said.

The new design proposal will be recommended by the tollway design staff to the Corridor Agency board of directors at its monthly meeting on Thursday, Cox said.

The much-delayed environmental report, which has been rewritten and revised, is scheduled for public circulation again in March, 1990. Construction, Cox said, would not be delayed by this new design proposal or by plans to combine the state-mandated environmental impact report with a federal environmental study, a process that some corridor officials previously wanted to avoid in order to speed the project to completion.

Construction of the tollway, which will connect the Corona del Mar Freeway at MacArthur Boulevard in Newport Beach to Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano, is now scheduled to begin in January, 1991, he said.

New Corridor Design A new design proposed for the San Joaquin Hills tollway envisions commuter trains in the median strip and 2 reversible car-pool lanes. The toll road still would have 3 regular mixed-flow lanes in each direction.