COMMENTARY ON TRANSPORTATION : Tollways Juggernaut: Is It the Right Road for Public Travel? : Against: More freeway lanes, controls on growth and incentives for ridesharing are better ways to meet our needs.

With five toll roads planned for construction this decade, Orange County will irrevocably set its transportation future in concrete: the concrete of more freeways that you will have to pay to use. The economic and environmental toll will be devastating.

Three of these toll roads will be transportation corridors crossing the largely undeveloped hilly open spaces of Orange County--open space the citizens want to preserve; land where the few remaining wild animals of Orange County can survive.

But the developers want these corridors. And in a strange, convoluted logic, the county has found a way to meet the developers’ needs. Let the developers pay for the corridors by charging them assessment fees along the rights of way. Fees that, of course, are passed right on to the new homeowners.

Unfortunately, not only does this make housing more expensive but it comes nowhere near meeting the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to construct the corridors.

To open up these lands for development, the taxpayer is going to become a toll payer. How much of a toll? It has been suggested that the 17-mile San Joaquin Hills Corridor will cost $2.25 each way. For the working commuter that’s $25 a week, $100 a month and more than $1,000 a year.

Truly a road for the rich.

Many motorists may be financially unwilling or unable to use the tollways. The question must be asked: “If motorists do not use the $667-million San Joaquin Hills Corridor, will the taxpayer have to bail out the road builders?” In terms of transportation problems, building more houses to pay for roads is self-defeating.

The Environmental Protection Agency has rejected the San Joaquin Hills Corridor environmental impact report. Transportation officials must realize that they will also meet great resistance when they try to win approval for a tollway down the Santa Ana River. It is time to look for a better system than tollways.

But what can Orange County do to improve its bleak transportation future? Certainly we must add more lanes to existing freeways. Additionally, a financial incentive should be found for those willing to participate in ride-sharing. One way would be to eliminate the gas tax for bona fide car pools.

More important, the county and the cities must get a handle on uncontrolled commercial and residential growth. The growth of Orange County should be redirected back to the restoration of an aging housing stock and overwhelmed infrastructure. Better to slow the growth and build new housing and apartments near existing and expanded transportation networks, which would feed into a rapid transit system, than to build in the surrounding rugged hills.

If we have to be taxed more, we should not pay for toll roads but instead build a high-speed rail system. Many commercial, industrial and residential areas across the county could be joined with a rapid transit system. If just a small percentage of the commuters use such a system, it frees up the freeways.

When the freeways of San Francisco and Oakland were shattered in 1989 by a major earthquake 60 miles away, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District system saved the day. What a heavy toll it will be for Orange County when a truly major earthquake hits if we have no alternative transportation system.

In the 1980s, Orange County received few road improvements for its state and federal gas taxes. In the 1990s we will bear a higher sales tax. One more tax in the form of tolls for roads that are economically punitive and environmentally destructive, and that intensify urban sprawl is too heavy a toll to bear. Orange County must do better.