COUNTYWIDE : Firms Chosen to Guide Tollway Work

Setting the stage for construction of three tollways planned in Orange County, transportation officials on Thursday selected three engineering firms to keep tabs on the day-to-day efforts to build the highways.

The tollway agencies voted unanimously to choose Ebasco Services Inc., Harris & Associates, and the Sverdrup-Bechtelconsortium to shepherd construction work on the ambitious new projects.

Ebasco, which has an office in Santa Ana, was selected to monitor work on the Eastern Transportation Corridor linking the Riverside Freeway to the Santa Ana Freeway.

Concord-based Harris & Associates will oversee construction on the northern segment of the Foothill Transportation Corridor, which runs roughly parallel to the San Diego Freeway through the rolling hills of South County. Officials said the group was recommended in part because it has an “excellent” recent history of construction experience on Caltrans highway projects.

Sverdrup, with an office in Irvine, will join Bechtel to watch work on the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, which breaks off of Interstate 5 in southern Mission Viejo and runs northwest through pristine meadows and foothills to link with the Corona del Mar Freeway. The consortium was selected in part because it has recent experience on a highway project in Turkey that employed a financing and construction scheme similar to that being used on the San Joaquin Hills tollway.

The engineering groups were selected by an evaluation team of elected officials, public works personnel from local cities, Caltrans experts and personnel from the tollway agencies.

In other action Thursday, the tollway directors:

* Asked their legal staff to devise a policy for board members being lobbied by firms vying for work contracts. Irvine Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan, a tollway board member, complained that she had been approached by some firms and had to tell them she “couldn’t talk at all” because there was no clear policy.

Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young argued that any policy prohibiting conversations with prospective consultants and others would weaken board members’ ability to make an educated evaluation of an applicant. County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez agreed, saying any “prohibitions on communication” would be unwise. He said tollway directors should use their “good wisdom” to stay within “the parameters of the law.”

* Announced that an increase in fees charged developers to fund the tollway projects will be considered by the board at its Jan. 10 meeting. The proposed fee hike comes at a bad time for development firms, which are suffering the effects of a sharp downturn in the housing market. The three tollways are being funded through a combination of fees charged to developers of projects near the highways and, eventually, the revenue derived from motorists who use the routes.