State Officials OK Pacts for 3 Toll Highways : Transit: Projects totaling $1.7 billion will be built in Orange and San Diego counties and the Bay Area. California will take possession of the thoroughfares in 35 years.

State transportation officials completed the first step into an era of private toll roads Tuesday by formally approving agreements with three consortiums for the construction of $1.7 billion in privately financed expressways.

Saying that the new roads would help relieve congestion without “depleting the state’s limited transportation funds,” state Transportation Director Robert K. Best announced that contracts had been signed with companies planning to build private toll roads in Orange County, San Diego County and the San Francisco area.

In Orange County, the agreement would allow the California Private Transportation Corp. to build a 10-mile, four-lane toll road along California 91 from the Riverside County line to California 55. The $88.3-million project is expected to be completed in 1994.

The San Diego project would provide a 10-mile limited-access toll road linking California 905 (Otay Mesa Road) near the Mexican border with California 54. Costing an estimated $400 million, the project is slated by its developers--California Transportation Ventures--for completion in 1995.

Best said the biggest project--a $1.2-billion, 85-mile expressway--would be built in Northern California. The new roadway, to be built by the California Toll Road Co., an international consortium, would provide a link between Interstates 80 and 505 near Vacaville and Interstate 680 near Fremont in the East Bay.

Best said state officials were still negotiating an agreement for a fourth project with a consortium headed by Texas magnate H. Ross Perot. Plans for that project call for the construction of a $700-million elevated expressway in Orange County. The 11.2-mile tollway would connect the Santa Ana Freeway near Anaheim Stadium with the San Diego Freeway near the John Wayne-Orange County Airport.

Under the agreements, the private companies are required to plan, finance and construct the projects. Once completed, they are allowed to operate them and charge tolls for their use for 35 years. At the end of that time, they must turn them over to the state.

The state is expected to set a ceiling on tolls for the new highways ranging from about 10 cents to 20 cents a mile. The roads will receive no federal or state funding.

The four toll road projects were authorized by the Legislature last year in exchange for former Gov. George Deukmejian’s agreement to endorse a 9-cent per gallon gasoline tax increase. The tax increase, approved by the voters in June, was designed to help finance a 10-year, $18.5-billion transportation improvement program.

Business, Transportation and House Agency Secretary Carl Covitz told a news conference Tuesday that, like Deukmejian, Gov. Pete Wilson supported the idea of private-public partnerships to build road and rail projects.

The toll road concept however, has been criticized by several Democratic legislators who said they feared that taxpayers might have to bail out the projects if they went broke. Others complained that the four projects selected by the Deukmejian Administration all seemed to have been in Republican areas and bypassed populous Los Angeles County.