Countywide : Land Buying for I-5 Work to Be Checked

Upset by delays and cost overruns in Caltrans’ acquisition of privately owned rights of way for the massive, $1.6-billion project to widen the Santa Ana Freeway, the Orange County Transportation Commission decided Monday to start monitoring the land purchases.

“Caltrans is having some difficulty in acquiring I-5 right of way,” Commissioner Richard B. Edgar, a Tustin councilman, said. “I would like the OCTC staff to monitor the process and get back to us with periodic reports about the number of parcels being acquired, when, and the cost.

“I think this is needed to (make) this process more public, to give it higher visibility,” Edgar added.

OCTC Executive Director Stanley T. Oftelie agreed to have his staff assemble the data sought by Edgar. However, he said, specific descriptions of each parcel and its estimated acquisition cost might be too difficult to obtain or legally constrained, since some parcels are the subject of ongoing or potential lawsuits.

The California Department of Transportation has been plagued in the last two years by repeated cost overruns on the freeway-widening project, attributed mostly to Orange County’s escalating real estate prices and Caltrans’ own lack of manpower and money to process the large number of individual parcels needed for the project.

In 1988, cost estimates for the entire project were raised from $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion, with a new, revised figure up to 20% higher expected any day.

In some cases, developers built new structures on land that was only last year targeted for acquisition, such as the Liberty Mutual high-rise adjacent to the freeway near Broadway in Santa Ana. Caltrans officials attributed the Liberty Mutual case to old, out-of-date freeway route maps used by Santa Ana city officials in granting development permits.

The Santa Ana Freeway project involves doubling the width of the roadway from six lanes to 12, with lanes and ramps reserved for buses and car pools that will soar above the Costa Mesa Freeway interchange, thus bypassing the congestion below.

In other action Monday, the transportation commission voted to oppose proposed regional air quality rules that may delay Orange County transportation projects by requiring more environmental paper work.

County officials had raised the issue on Friday, charging that the Southern California Assn. of Governments, a regional-planning agency, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District were adopting policies that would require new projects to undergo additional screening for compliance with anti-smog goals.

For example, county officials said, the agency that is planning three tollways in South Orange County would have to reopen environmental impact reports and show whether the tollways will result in a net improvement in air quality and why such items as car-pool lanes are not included in current construction plans.

The commission decided to send a letter to SCAG’s executive committee and have a member or staff person testify against the proposed air-quality policies at the executive committee’s meeting on Thursday.

SCAG officials have said that many Orange County projects would be exempt and that the compliance problem involving the regional air quality and transportation plans is not as serious as some fear.

The commission also voted to support legislation in Sacramento that would create a transportation corridor conservancy that would raise funds to purchase and protect highway and rail rights of way for future projects statewide.

The legislation, proposed by Assemblyman Bill Leonard (R-Big Bear), is not yet scheduled for any legislative hearings.