ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : New Homes Need New Roads

If you’ve been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in South County and wondered why it’s so bad, a recent action by the Orange County Board of Supervisors offers a clue.

Without so much as a SigAlert, the board released the Mission Viejo Co. from restrictions that would have controlled the number of homes it could build at its Aliso Viejo project. Restrictions tied construction to the phased development of the controversial San Joaquin Hills tollway.

To get around a legal challenge to the corridor mounted by environmentalists, the board agreed to ease those restrictions and allow permits for 1,300 new homes to be issued any time after Jan. 1 and for 1,400 more three years later. The lawsuit questions the validity of the proposed toll road’s environmental impact report.

The original agreement held up issuance of the 1,300 building permits until a contractor was selected for the freeway segment through Aliso Viejo; the remaining 1,400 were to be delayed until that road was completed.

The county’s concession came at a price--$9 million more than the $51 million the Mission Viejo Co. was originally supposed to provide for public improvements. And $34 million of that total now is to be given in advance. That’s not too punitive a price for the builder to be untied from the freeway construction schedule for the final phase of its 17,300-home project. But with all the traffic congestion, can the public afford it?

What if the San Joaquin Hills Corridor is never built, or is long delayed? Residents and motorists could suffer from increased congestion.

If the board was intent on giving the builder an exit ramp from the original agreement, better to tie that release to the outcome of the legal challenge against the corridor’s construction. That at least would protect the public. The principle of sound planning would be upheld. New homes would be dependent on clearance for a new road.

To do otherwise would only add to the county’s already woeful traffic problems and deepen many people’s belief that developers’ interests, not the public’s, drive the board’s land-use decisions.