The Long and Winding Road That Led to the Concept of Tollways : CORRIDOR -- A friendly passageway through hostile or foreign-held territory. (Webster’s Dictionary)

It was a twist of fate.

Back in 1972, residents opposed to the long-awaited Pacific Coast Freeway along California 1 decided to take their case directly to the halls of the state Legislature in Sacramento. Their voices were heard. The project died.

It was the demise of the Coast Freeway that gave birth to the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, a tollway now the target of mushrooming citizen opposition.

County planners, realizing that the absence of the Coast Freeway meant that traffic and land use plans for South County were out of whack, looked for an alternative route to funnel the flood of cars between new subdivisions in the south and job centers in the north.

In 1976, county officials concluded that a San Joaquin Hills highway was the only way to handle expected traffic and prevent a disaster on Interstate 5.

Opponents attended public hearings to question the need for a San Joaquin Hills freeway. They also proposed limits on South County’s growth and the compacting of existing cities in ways that would encourage use of mass transit. Their arguments didn’t prevail. Moreover, they felt the hearings were merely window-dressing for a development-driven agenda.

In 1984, county officials devised a plan to fund the proposed freeway with a 1-cent sales tax hike, revenue from which would be shared with mass transit. But South County activists led a vocal battle to defeat the measure, crushing it 70% to 30%.

When state and county officials realized in 1985 that they didn’t have the money to build all three freeways planned for South County, they created a unique organization of local cities and the county to come up with the cash.

In 1987, the roads, once envisioned as tax-supported freeways, became tollways.

Under the plan that set up the Transportation Corridor Agencies, 48.5% of the estimated $2-billion cost of building the highways must come from developer fees, which currently range up to $2,822 per single-family home.

The county contributes fees collected for development in the unincorporated area, while the cities along the planned routes contribute the fees for development that occurs within their boundaries.

The remaining 51.5% of the construction costs is to come from the tolls, ranging up to $4.50 per trip, with a few million dollars from state and federal sources as well. But since tolls won’t be collected until the roads are open to traffic, the TCA borrows money from other agencies and sells construction bonds to be paid off later from toll revenue.

Under current law, the tollways must become freeways once the tollways are paid off.

As of Dec. 31, 1990, the tollway agencies--one to oversee the San Joaquin Hills road and another to oversee the Eastern and Foothill corridors--had raised about $176.9 million and spent $139.1 million for environmental studies, design work, acquiring rights of way, administrative staffing, board meetings, public workshops, rent, lawyers and lobbyists. Construction on the northern end of the Foothill tollway has begun, and stretches of the San Joaquin Hills tollway have been graded by developers in anticipation of the project.

To help improve cash flow, the San Joaquin Hills agency recently borrowed $13 million from the Orange County Transportation Commission and is seeking another $25 million in loans from other agencies to pay its day-to-day bills until construction bonds are sold.

From the start, some developers, including the Mission Viejo Co., pressed the organization to pour concrete quickly, while others, such as the Irvine Co., urged a slower, more deliberative approach to avoid court challenges.

The corridor agencies tended to side with the Irvine Co.’s approach, but that wasn’t sufficient to forestall outright rejection of a draft environmental impact statement for the San Joaquin Hills project, for example, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.