ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : For Whom Do These Roads Toll?

Motorists stuck in Orange County traffic tie-ups who have yearned for alternate routes will soon have some--if they are willing to pay the price. Within the next several years there may be no fewer than five new freeways to help ease the traffic crunch, although “free” is hardly the apt designation for the relief roads. The proposed routes will be toll roads, available to drivers at a price every time they use them.

Previously, the San Joaquin Hills, Eastern and Foothill Transportation corridors, which will be built with public funds, were approved as toll roads. Last week, the state approved two more toll roads for Orange County, one 10 miles along the median strip of the Riverside Freeway from the Costa Mesa Freeway to the Riverside County line, and the other 11.2 miles down the middle of the Santa Ana River from the Santa Ana Freeway to the Corona del Mar Freeway. In a rare public-private partnership, they will be built on public land by private consortiums that will deed them to the state and then lease them back. The builders will charge a toll to cover their costs and profit. No federal or state funds are to be spent on the projects, which must still pass environmental muster.

Charging tolls is one way to build needed traffic lanes given the shortage of federal, state and local road funds and county residents’ refusal to vote additional local taxes for road and transit projects. But the private tollways must truly be “private” roads that don’t wind up raiding the public treasury to bail out builders if the roads don’t turn out to be the routes to revenue that they expect. They must also be affordable to use. Although the two new toll roads are less public than the others, public rights of way are still involved and the tolls should not be set so high that they become economic roadblocks that keep middle- and lower-income motorists from using them. Most of the toll roads opened around the nation recently have set tolls between eight and nine cents per mile. Tolls on the new Orange County roads are expected to range from 10 to 20 cents a mile.

Will Orange County motorists pay that price and turn out in enough numbers to make the roads profitable? That is the gamble the consortiums are taking.

As long as Orange County residents continue to balk at paying higher taxes for road improvements, it seems reasonable and fitting that they have the option of paying for more roads with a direct user fee. But if they reject that, too, it must be the private sector for whom the bill tolls.