County Panel OKs Deal for Private Toll Lanes by ’94 : Transportation: The Riverside Freeway project will stretch 10 miles from the Costa Mesa Freeway to the county line.

Frustrated Riverside Freeway commuters should be using the state’s first privately owned toll lanes by 1994 under an agreement approved Monday by Orange County transportation officials.

Members of the Orange County Transportation Authority board voted unanimously to sign a pact previously approved 4 to 3 by their Riverside County counterparts that allows the $100-million project to proceed, with construction scheduled to begin in September.

The plan calls for a set of toll lanes to be built in the heavily congested freeway’s vacant dirt median for 10 miles, between the Costa Mesa Freeway and the car-pool lanes already under construction in Riverside County.

The agreement ratified Monday marks a compromise with Riverside County officials, who agreed not to file a threatened lawsuit to stop the project. Some Riverside County transportation officials had argued that the toll project is discriminatory because Riverside County taxpayers are already paying higher sales taxes to create the toll-free car-pool lanes on their side of the border and thus would face a “double-whammy” by having to pay tolls upon crossing the county line.

“It’s a win-win situation,” said Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder. “Everyone who worked on this agreement is to be congratulated.”

Riverside County officials said they hope to make the best of a situation that would otherwise take years of litigation to resolve.

The project promises not only traffic relief, but the first true test in the United States of “congestion pricing,” the concept of charging motorists more to use a highway during peak hours.

The toll lanes will be built by California Private Transportation Corp., whose officials say they expect one-way tolls of $2 during peak hours, $1 in off-peak periods, and free access to car pools of three or more people. The pricing is designed to reward off-peak use, when the highway’s capacity may be underutilized.

After OCTA members quipped that they should grab the agreement with Riverside while it was still on the table, Supervisor Don R. Roth said all he was interested in was “getting something going there on that nightmare of the 91. . . . Does this mean I can go out (in September) and watch them dig some holes?”

“Yes,” said OCTA project director Lisa Mills.

The tollway builders expect to arrange private financing in the next few months.

There is another hurdle--a lawsuit by state engineers who believe that the project violates state laws and who want to preserve the design work for themselves. A ruling in San Francisco is expected later this month. Caltrans officials believe strongly that the legal challenge will fail.

Meanwhile, Russell Lightcap, Caltrans district director in Orange County, described the toll lanes as “innovative.”

OCTA Chairman Roger R. Stanton, however, worried aloud that Caltrans might take the car-pool requirement of three or more people for free toll lane use and transfer that standard to car-pool lanes elsewhere.

But Lightcap said Caltrans would study the issue thoroughly before taking such action and explained that the Riverside Freeway project was not necessarily a dangerous precedent for car-pool lanes throughout California because it involved a unique test of congestion pricing.

In California, traditional car-pool lanes are reserved for vehicles carrying two or more.