San Diego Toll Road Plan Among Four OKd by State : Highways: 10-mile route through South Bay area would build Rt. 125 to Otay Mesa border crossing.

Nudging the state a step closer to an era of toll roads, Gov. George Deukmejian on Friday unveiled plans to allow entrepreneurs to build $2.5 billion worth of private expressways around the state, including a 10-mile toll road in southern San Diego County leading to the new border crossing.

The San Diego project was one of four selected in an unprecedented competition to see who could best plan, finance, construct and operate their own private transportation projects before turning them over to the state.

Other winners in the transportation competition included consortiums planning to build two toll roads in Orange County, and a third group that wants to construct a toll road in the fast-growing suburban counties east of Oakland.

The winning San Diego project would take the proposed California 125 south of the Sweetwater Reservoir, near California 54, to the new international border crossing on Otay Mesa. The 10-mile, four-lane toll road would run through some of the most desirable land slated for development in the South Bay.

“It’s desert with scrub brush now,” said Bruce E. Podwal, president of California Transporation Ventures, the business consortium that proposed the toll road. “The developers have all said they would all donate the property (for the road) and contribute toward the project.”

Podwal said the developers that would benefit from the project include EastLake Development, which already has donated land for a year-round Olympic training center now under construction by the Lower Otay Lake. Other beneficiaries would include San Miguel Partners, McMillan properties and the Baldwin Co., which submitted an unsuccessful toll road proposal of its own for the same route. All own land in the area that would be served by the toll road, Podwal said.

State transportation officials said Friday that the proposed route would accommodate plans for an international airport near the border. Podwal said the $400-million road project is scheduled for completion in December 1995 and would cost commuters about $1 to use.

Deukmejian hailed the winners as part of a “historic public-private partnership” that would give congestion-weary commuters an alternative to traditional freeways. Tolls on the new roads are expected to range from 10 to 20 cents a mile.

“While privatizing roads is not something totally new in the country, California’s approach, I believe, is unique,” Deukmejian said, trying to make a distinction from East Coast toll roads. “Rather than dictating which projects should be bid upon, we allowed the private sector the flexibility to go out and determine the projects that would best serve the public.”

Other winning projects announced Friday:

An 11.2-mile, $700-million elevated expressway to run through the middle of the Santa Ana River flood plain in Orange County. The four-lane tollway would link Interstate 5 near Anaheim Stadium with California 73 near the John Wayne-Orange County Airport. Completion date: 1997.

A 10-mile, $88.3 million toll road along California 91 from Anaheim to the San Bernardino County line. Completion date: 1994.

In Northern California, a $1.2-billion, 40-mile toll road stretching from Sunol in Alameda County on the south to Antioch, on the edge of Contra Costa County. The toll road would be the first phase of a proposed 85-mile arc through a fast-growing suburban corridor that stretches from Oakland to Sacramento. Completion: 1997.

Passed over by the state was a proposal to rebuild San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway, damaged in the Oct. 17 earthquake, and two Low Angeles-area entries that included plans for a high-speed, high-tech train from Los Angeles International Airport to Palmdale.

Caltrans Director Robert K. Best also said that “there are a lot of economic incentives” for large landowners near the proposed toll roads to cooperate with the projects. He added that he hadn’t realized before Friday that the winning proposals were in heavily Republican areas.

But the coincidence didn’t escape Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who said the department’s selection of the winning bidders showed “a pro-development-at-all-cost attitude. It’s a Caltrans giveaway to Republican supporters.”

Although still facing local environmental review, those private builders announced Friday now have the legal authority to begin negotiating details with the state. Political opposition to stop them would be an uphill fight.

One of the big winners was Texas computer magnate H. Ross Perot, whose consortium proposed the Santa Ana River project. James E. Erickson, an attorney for the Perot group, said Friday that the consortium now plans to ask Disneyland, Anaheim Stadium, large office towers and South Coast Plaza Shopping Center to chip in.

“We’re going to tell them, ‘If you want to get an off-ramp into your parking lot, there’s some value here. . . . We may be able to put an off-ramp to your parking lot. Do you want to pay for it?’ ” he said.

The idea of toll roads, common for a time during California’s Gold Rush days, has made a comeback in recent years because of increased congestion and a shortage of highway funds.

Two years ago, the Legislature gave grudging approval for three locally controlled toll roads to be built in southern Orange County. And, last year, Deukmejian won the right to take toll roads statewide in exchange for his support for the 5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase, approved by voters in June.

Best said Friday that toll road projects will receive no state or federal funding. Although the state could assist by condemning property, he said the winning proposals are planned for existing public right-of-way or are in favor with neighboring landowners.

Once completed, the toll roads will be deeded over to the state but then leased back to their builders, who will have the right to charge tolls for the next 35 years. Tolls will be set to guarantee a reasonable rate of return and can only be changed with state approval, said Best.

Asked if the state would bail out any private project that goes broke, Deukmejian quipped, “We’ll let the next governor worry about that.”