Counties Open Their Drive for Transit Funds : Transportation: Officials propose highway projects that statewide would cost more than twice as much as available from new gasoline tax.

In their first chance to get at cash from the new 5-cent gasoline tax increase, officials of Southern California communities Tuesday proposed new highway projects costing far more than will be available under the voter-approved measure.

The wish list presented to the California Transportation Commission at a hearing in Los Angeles included freeway-widening projects that officials said were unneeded as recently as five years ago but are now deemed essential to relieve congestion.

These include expanding U.S. 101 in Santa Barbara County and the Antelope Valley Freeway in northern Los Angeles County, and extending California 30 from La Verne to the San Bernardino County line.

Also, Los Angeles County has seized on the flow of new cash from Proposition 111, which was passed in June, to breathe life into the long-stalled effort to close a gap in the Long Beach Freeway (Interstate 710) through South Pasadena.

That has reignited a decades-old war between South Pasadena, which has long barred the freeway from entering its city, and neighboring cities Pasadena and Alhambra, which say they are choking on traffic forced off the freeway and onto local streets.

Statewide, $4.9 billion in new highway projects have been proposed, said commission deputy director Peter Hathaway, but only $2.4 billion is available.

The state commission, which is appointed by the governor, is scheduled to select the winners Sept. 19 and 20 in Sacramento.

Another $2.9 billion in rail projects was proposed, and commissioners said almost all of them are expected to be approved.

Highway projects approved by the commission in past years but never funded will use up all of the new cash for four years, Hathaway said, so the new proposals that are selected will be built between 1995 and 1997.

But not all the losing proposals will have to wait until 1998. Among Southern California counties, voters in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Santa Barbara have passed half-cent sales tax increases that will pay for many of the transportation projects that do not make the cut next month.

Heavily congested Los Angeles County has placed a second half-cent sales tax on the November ballot, and voters in Orange and Ventura counties will consider initial half-cent measures in the same election.

Commission member Bruce Nestande needled Orange County officials for complaining about heavy congestion when Orange is the “only urban county in California that does not have a local half-cent sales tax.”

Orange County voters twice have rejected such an added tax but Irv Pickler, vice president of the Orange County Transportation Commission, said he is optimistic the levy will pass this time.

Among projects given top priority by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which prepared the county’s plan, are extending California 30 through La Verne and Claremont, installing car-pool lanes on the San Diego, Artesia, Orange and Pomona freeways and extending the El Monte Busway.

San Bernardino County officials gave top priority to extending California 30 from the Los Angeles County line to Interstate 215, and Orange County assigned the highest priority to widening the Santa Ana Freeway (Interstate 5).

San Diego County officials said the projects they need most are the completion of Interstate 15 through City Heights and the widening of Interstate 5.

In trying to boost prospects for their proposals, officials employed a variety of strategies. Santa Barbara officials, for example, argued that their county deserved relief because many of the motorists clogging the Ventura Freeway are vacationers passing through.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich insisted that widening the Antelope Valley Freeway north of the San Fernando Valley is warranted because Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster are the “fastest-growing cities in the county--Palmdale and Lancaster have been the state’s fastest--and we must take action.”