Some Pay Price, but for Others Oceanside Span Takes Bigger Toll

For Bob Herrera and other residents of the Murray Mission area of Oceanside, it’s no small irony that their neighborhood convenience store beckons just out of reach, across the dry gulch known as the San Luis Rey River.

Because for many homeowners, the store isn’t so convenient after all. It lies beyond the concrete curtain, what at least one resident has called the Great Wall of Oceanside.

To make those last-second dinner-time runs for milk or bread, or even to buy a morning paper, Herrera and others must pay a 50-cent toll to cross the Murray Road bridge, the tiny span that is both loved and loathed in this little corner of North County.

“Right now, milk doesn’t cost $2, it costs $2.50. Cigarettes, bread, anything you want to name, is also 50 cents more,” said Herrera, president of the 530-home Murray Mission homeowner’s association, who can almost see the convenience store from his back yard.

And, if you just plain forget something at the store, residents say, you have to pay a second time to cross the bridge.

“The next nearest market on this side is more than 4 miles away,” Herrera said. “So, when your kids want milk for their cereal, you have to bite the big one and pay the 50 cents.”

No Relief From Tolls

The venerable San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge isn’t the only toll crossing in San Diego County. There’s also the Murray Road bridge, the Coronado span’s country cousin to the north.

But as the North County continues its relentless growth, the 654-foot-long Murray Road span has become a bridge over troubled, if not downright angry, waters.

Because, even as officials begin to ease the required tolls at its giant sister span, an end to the practice of throwing quarters at the Murray Road bridge is nowhere in sight.

“With this bridge, they used to just charge between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m.,” Herrera said. “Then they increased it to 24 hours a day and put an attendant there so you couldn’t blow them off. Instead of getting better, the tolls are getting more severe.”

Herrera isn’t the only one chaffing over what many consider to be a pesky toll. The issue is routinely raised during Murray Mission homeowner’s meetings, he said. And many of the North County commuters who use the bridge as a shortcut to the back gate at Camp Pendleton aren’t thrilled with it either.

The $4.2-million structure was built by the city of Oceanside five years ago to keep traffic flowing over the San Luis Rey River, which frequently flooded, washing out the old road that ran across the riverbed.

Since the city didn’t have the money to pay for the bridge outright, however, revenue bonds were used to finance construction.

And, under the current repayment plan, the bridge won’t be paid off until the year 2004, according to Oceanside city Councilwoman Melba Bishop.

Tolls Here to Stay

So, for now, she said, the tolls are here to stay.

Bishop has a stake in the success of the bridge. The Murray Mission resident spearheaded its construction and was the first to proudly drive across it on ribbon-cutting day.

“That’s my bridge,” she said. “And the people who are doing the complaining don’t have any history as to why it was built.

“Some of us remember children dying in that river, times that our husbands couldn’t go to work because the water was so high, and other times when we worried whether a fire truck could ever get to us if we had a fire. I mean, we were surrounded by water on all sides.”

The river flooded so often, she said, that the road was unusable for months at a time. The alternative route is a 12-mile detour, partly along narrow and crowded Mission Avenue.

The toll bridge, Bishop said, provided a more permanent solution.

Today, the area between the bridge and California 78 resembles a lunar landscape as earthmovers scurry along the desolate terrain like worker ants, clearing the way for new condominium projects. The old Murray Road has been renamed College Avenue and extended south to California 78, opening the bridge to a barrage of new traffic.

Indeed, since the road was expanded two years ago, traffic across the bridge has doubled-from 2,200 vehicles a day to more than 4,800.

So why can’t it be paid off any sooner? bridge-crossers ask.

“The money you blow on that bridge adds up,” said Katie Doffeny, a visiting nursing assistant who said she crosses the bridge at least twice a day.

Like many, she’d like to see monthly passes issued for regular users.

“They say they’re going to stop collecting the tolls when the bridge is paid for. I believe that like a hole in the head.”

Carl Husby, director of finance and management for the city of Oceanside, said the first call date on the bonds isn’t due for another four years.

“But that bridge is more than paying for itself. And, if it continues, the City Council has many options. They can pay off the debt early. But, when that will happen, I don’t know.”

Some Angry Responses

In the meantime, toll-taker Arnold Smith watches the regular bridge users--the “frequent fliers”--pass by each day.

He’s seen the old ladies miss the toll basket with quarter after quarter, watched the businessmen do their car seat dance after they spill coffee down their crotch while reaching for change.

He’s heard the angry complaints, listened to all the excuses.

“I’ve heard them all,” said Smith, who works the morning rush-hour shift, when 85% of the traffic is military en route to Camp Pendleton.

“The ones I especially like are, ‘I’m lost and I just made a U-turn, do I have to pay?’ or ‘C’mon buddy, give me a break. My girlfriend lives just over the other side.’ ”

But this is Oceanside, not the big city. So, when people are short of cash, the toll-takers will sometimes make up the difference from their own pockets--”little loans,” they say, which are often repaid.

Sometimes, though, the complaints get on Smith’s nerves. Hostility can run high. So Smith has his responses.

“I tell some people that the toll was put here for tourists from the East Coast, so they’ll feel right at home,” he said. “When they grouse about the toll, I tell them, ‘You’re right, that 50-cent cost is ridiculous. I think it should be a buck.’ ”

Some bridge users don’t give Smith time for his routine. They just run the tolls. As many as 30 toll-runners a day careen through the toll house with the wood-shingled roof, attendants say.

One motorist whizzed past at 90 m.p.h., striking a light post and dragging it a quarter mile before police caught up with him.

The response of the toll-takers is swift: jot down license numbers.

Katie Doffeny is one of those who got caught.

“One day, I got so fed up I just blasted across,” she said. “But they got my license number. A few days later, I got a $10 ticket in the mail.

Not everyone’s blood pressure rises, however, at the sight of the Murray Road bridge.

“What’s 50 cents?” asked Sarah Benner. “I go across that bridge twice a day. It would take me that much gas and more to drive around the long way.”

Freddie Hicks, a resident of the Shadow Oaks housing development, takes the toll in stride.

“My mom lives on the other side,” he said. “But I can’t use the toll as an excuse not to go visit her on Sunday. I know, I’ve tried.”

Defender of Bridge

Kevin Oakley, manager of the 7-Eleven store on the north side of the bridge, summed up the feelings of a bushel of other bridge users.

“We just don’t have the floods like we used to,” he said. “Since they put that bridge in, the water has stayed away. I think it would be better off just to put the road back.”

Nonetheless, Councilwoman Bishop defends her bridge.

“My answer to these people is that nobody has to use that bridge,” she said. “If they don’t want to pay, they can still drive around the long way. And anyone who thinks that riverbed will stay dry is kidding themselves. That river will be back someday, and in a big way.”