Countywide : Traffic Controls Tied to Tax to Be Studied

Strict new traffic controls linked to a proposed state gasoline tax increase on the June ballot will be discussed Saturday by city, county and development industry officials meeting in Irvine.

The wide-ranging controls would, for example, require that new intersections be able to handle rush-hour congestion with a minimum of stop-and-go traffic.

The controls would be part of sweeping regional congestion management plans. What’s more, local governments failing to implement such plans would be denied state transportation funds.

The legislation requiring congestion management plans was adopted last year by the Legislature and would take effect if voters approve the proposed 9-cent state gasoline tax hike on the June, 1990, ballot.

Authored by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, the new rules are already the target of a major lobbying effort by critics, such as the Building Industry Assn. and the Irvine Co., which is already seeking amendments that would allow exemptions where no feasible method exists to ensure compliance.

Katz will not attend Saturday’s congestion management workshop, scheduled from 9 a.m. to noon at Irvine City Hall, but he will be represented by his top staffer--John Stevens, a former aide to Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley.

The meeting is being billed by sponsors, such as the Orange County Transportation Commission and the county’s League of Cities, as an effort to educate officials from the county’s 29 cities about what Katz’s legislation will require of them.

But the meeting also is likely to serve as a battleground by political factions warring over growth management issues and over who will enforce the regional congestion management plans.

Under Katz’s bill, cities and counties must agree to designate an agency to enforce the congestion management plans, but in Orange County so far the cities have balked at giving such power to the existing Orange County Transportation Commission.

Some city officials have been attempting to leverage County Environmental Management Agency officials against the Transportation Commission, with Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young saying he would be happy to have the county agency become the lead agency for any congestion management plan.

Young, an influential member of the Orange County League of Cities, has been at odds with Transportation Commission Executive Director Stanley T. Oftelie for more than a year over the proposed make-up of a new regional planning agency--a countywide “Council of Governments”--that would coordinate transportation and land-use decisions.

The league has preferred a new board dominated by city members, while county government has been insisting on a primary planning role.

A basic problem with Katz’s legislation, Young said, is that it may discourage high-density development needed to support light rail or monorail systems. Santa Ana is one of five central Orange County cities considering a monorail system that would tie into existing Amtrak stations and a monorail planned near John Wayne Airport.

“On the one hand they want us to promote mass transit and get people out of their cars,” Young said, “but on the other hand they seem to want to impose suburban traffic standards in areas that are already heavily urbanized.”