Riley, Brea Official Urge Use of County Funds to Expedite Road Projects

With state and federal money for highway projects drying up, two Orange County Transportation Commission members recommended Thursday that authorities dip into county funds to add new freeway lanes, help ease the financial crunch on three proposed toll roads and speed property acquisition for the Santa Ana Freeway widening.

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and Brea Councilwoman Clarice A. Blamer said in the draft of a letter to be sent to county transportation officials that the county needs “to put every transportation dollar to work as soon and as effectively as possible.”

“This illustrates our difficult financial situation,” said Stanley T. Oftelie, executive director of the County Transportation Commission. “We’re going to be spending the last resources we have. It’s not going to be too long before the cupboard is bare. There’s just no money left.”

Money for the projects would come from a cache of about $195 million that had been earmarked mostly for construction of a planned elevated transit-way for buses and car pools along the Santa Ana Freeway. In exchange, the state Department of Transportation could reimburse the county or provide credit for the construction of other projects, Riley and Blamer suggested.

Previously, the county funds had been left untouched, although the interest has generated more than $21 million in road-reconstruction work and traffic-signal coordination projects in recent years.

“We need to invest our resources in traffic solutions which provide high-impact, high-priority projects,” Riley and Blamer said in the letter. “The transportation future for our county is now. Our ability to wait for a better future has been stretched to the limit. . . . We need to act swiftly or we may be engulfed in traffic congestion.”

The recommendations from Riley and Blamer, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, come as a precursor to a March 26 meeting of the Transportation Commission and the Orange County Transit District.

Among projects spotlighted by Riley and Blamer are the proposed addition of two car-pool lanes on the Orange Freeway later this year and widening of the traffic-choked Riverside Freeway.

In addition, they recommend that county transportation officials explore offering loans to the agency planning the three toll roads in southern and eastern Orange County. The agency has experienced recent financial difficulties.

Riley and Blamer also proposed that county transportation officials work with the state transportation department to accelerate the purchase of land along the Santa Ana Freeway for a widening project that will more than double the number of lanes.

In recent months, a personnel shortage at Caltrans has hindered the agency in expeditiously purchasing land along the freeway corridor, the two officials said in the letter. Moreover, authorities say that state cash for property acquisition will dwindle if a gas-tax increase is not approved by California voters in June.

“We believe the agencies should work cooperatively to develop innovative ways to keep the right-of-way purchase process moving ahead rapidly,” the letter says, adding that county money should be used to hire additional Caltrans staff and buy land.

County officials are eager to buy the land as soon as possible, reasoning that its cost will only continue to rise.

If money was available, work on the Orange Freeway car-pool lanes, which are expected to cost $26 million, could begin before the end of the year.