Riverside County Asks Longer Toll Lanes : Transportation: Orange County officials react cooly to proposal to extend into the Inland Empire a pay-to-drive stretch of crowded freeway.

Riverside County officials are proposing a major expansion of privately owned toll lanes planned on the Riverside Freeway, with costs and toll revenue to be split equally among private investors and Riverside and Orange counties.

But Orange County transportation officials reacted cooly to the proposal, which they received earlier this week during talks aimed at speeding construction and averting Riverside County’s threatened lawsuit against the project.

The problem: Riverside County officials believe that charging tolls in Orange County will be unfair to Inland Empire commuters who recently voted to tax themselves to pay for widening the freeway, one of Southern California’s most traffic-choked arteries. That tax revenue is being used to build car-pool lanes for the freeway’s Riverside County stretch.

The Riverside County Transportation Commission has previously said it wants either an end to the toll road project or an extension of it into Riverside County, with reimbursement to the transportation panel for the car-pool lanes already being built that would end up as toll lanes.

Originally, the state Department of Transportation awarded the right to build and operate 10 miles of Riverside Freeway toll lanes between the Costa Mesa Freeway and the Riverside County line to Irvine-based California Private Transportation Corp. (CPTC).

But now, Orange County officials say, Riverside County is seeking to double the length of the toll lanes, from the original 10-mile, $88.3-million project to a 20-mile stretch from the Riverside Freeway’s junction with the Devore Freeway in Corona to its junction with the Orange Freeway in Anaheim. That would cost more than $100 million, with both counties and CPTC providing the capital.

Stanley T. Oftelie, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority, said he does not like the Riverside proposal.

“We’ve believed all along that this was proposed as a private-sector project and should remain private,” Oftelie said, “but I’ve also said we have to look at every option.”

Recently, Oftelie and other officials met with CPTC to discuss the possibility of having Orange County build the new lanes as soon as possible by using transportation sales tax revenue, then selling the lanes to CPTC, which has had difficulty raising investor capital for the project.

Oftelie is also hoping that CPTC will reimburse his agency for the environmental work already performed, which he estimates to be worth about $5 million.

CPTC President Gerald S. Pfeffer said negotiations are continuing, but he said he is not at liberty to divulge details.

Jack Reagan, executive director of the Riverside transportation panel, acknowledged Friday that there had been some discussions with Orange County officials, but he also declined to provide specifics “because we’re still considering litigation and because everything we talk about is subject to a closed session.”