COUNTYWIDE : Spending Plan for Transportation OKd

County transportation officials on Monday approved spending more than half a billion dollars to purchase Southern Pacific’s old Red Car trolley line and land for the massive Santa Ana Freeway widening project.

Officials acknowledged that they will have to borrow the $550 million for the freeway project because revenue from the Measure M sales tax increase won’t keep pace but said that it won’t affect funding for other transportation projects.

The tax takes effect on April 1 and is expected to raise $3.1 billion over 20 years.

On Friday, the Orange County Transportation Commission released a staff report showing that it would be 2010 or later before the right of way needed on the Santa Ana Freeway between the Garden Grove and Riverside freeways could be assembled if left to Caltrans and the federal government.

Currently, the widening project is under way south of the Santa Ana-Costa Mesa freeway interchange. Construction is scheduled for later this year on the segment between that junction and the interchange of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways, but the state has committed no construction money beyond that point.

A major effort will be launched in the next few weeks to get state officials to commit construction money by 1996, the year by which land purchases should be completed, OCTC officials said.

The project is extremely complex, OCTC officials said, because more than 600 parcels must be acquired and there are more than 80 toxic sites--mostly old gas stations. Also, an entire electrical substation must be replaced, and it contains a historic building, as well as a jet fuel pipeline and most of Pacific Bell’s transmission cables in the area.

Meanwhile, the purchase of the old Red Car trolley line will cost about $16.8 million and could be wrapped up later this week, closing a gap in a proposed Orange County-Los Angeles International Airport rail link.

A schedule for returning rail service to the route has not been developed.

The segment between the Los Angeles County border and Beach Boulevard in Stanton, and an adjacent, 3.8-acre station site will be purchased from the Southern Pacific Transportation Co.