Advertisement

ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Public Funds Should Not Be Used to Build Toll Roads : Transportation: The projects should not be pursued if private financing falls short.

Share
<i> State Sen. Bill Lockyer represents the 10th Senate District in Northern California</i>

The savings and loan scandal cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Now the government is being asked to bail out another bad investment--toll roads.

Despite assurances that public funds would not be used to build the four toll roads authorized by the Legislature in 1989 (two of which are in Orange County), Caltrans and the toll road developers are now asking for public funds. Some of the developers have stated that unless they receive developer fees, garbage fees, and other local subsidies, the four projects cannot be built. And the developers and Caltrans are lobbying Congress to allow the use of federal funds for toll roads.

I believe that it is inappropriate to use public funds for these projects. The Legislature authorized the toll road projects with the understanding that only private funds would be used.

Advertisement

Assembly Bill 680, which authorized the toll roads, states: “The Department of Transportation should be permitted and encouraged to test the feasibility of building privately funded transportation facilities by developing four demonstration projects.” The Senate Transportation Committee analysis and Senate floor analysis of the bill also stated that the projects would be built using private funds. And when Caltrans approved the four toll road projects, Caltrans Director Robert Best stated in a story in The Times that no federal funds would be used for toll roads.

The use of public funds is even more unconscionable, given that the developers have been given contracts that contain generous provisions such as: huge “franchise zones” within which competing projects are prohibited and the right to lease miles of airspace along toll roads for 99 years (at only $1 a year for the first 35 years). The developers can build gas stations, restaurants, shopping centers and other buildings on “airspace” property. They have no limit on the amount of toll that can be charged and an allowable profit margin exceeding 20% (“airspace”-lease profits are unlimited) as well as the power to condemn land through Caltrans.

These “incentives” are of dubious fairness to state residents. The provisions of these contracts are all the more questionable since they were negotiated in secret, with no review by the Legislature or any other agency.

Given these “incentives,” it is outrageous that the developers are now asking for public tax dollars. If the projects cannot be built because they are bad investments, they should not be built.

It is wrong to provide public subsidies to private investors unable to make investments viable without tax dollars.

Even if these projects are built using only private funds, toll roads are fundamentally inegalitarian. Such roads create a two-tier system, where people of ordinary means drive on roads that are falling apart while the affluent pay tolls and drive on new or improved highways. The use of public funds compounds this inequity. It is not fair to make people who cannot afford to use toll roads subsidize them through their tax dollars.

Advertisement

My concerns about lack of fairness are heightened by my fear that the toll roads will remain permanently inaccessible to people of ordinary means. AB 680 allows Caltrans to continue to charge tolls on all four projects when the developers’ toll road leases expire.

I have introduced a bill (SB 144) to prohibit public funds from being used for the AB 680 projects. I urge its support.

Advertisement