Tollway Debate Lacks Ferocity of Earlier Bouts : Transportation: Hearing sets stage for May 14 vote on the 23-mile Eastern highway.

Weighing in during an environmental review hearing on the proposed Eastern tollway, supporters said Thursday that the $630-million highway will dramatically ease commuter congestion, but detractors said it threatens to flood neighborhoods with traffic and pollution.

The hourlong hearing, which lacked the ferocity marking previous sessions on three tollways planned in Orange County, sets the stage for a May 14 vote on the 23-mile highway by the Transportation Corridor Agency, the multicityauthority that will build the road.

Only 14 speakers testified during the meeting, contrasted with scores that spoke during previous debates on the highways. Most of the opponents stopped short of demanding that the Eastern tollway not be built, instead pleading with officials to alter the route to avoid affecting their neighborhoods.

“We feel there’s a potential for high volumes of corridor traffic that will impact our area,” said Ila Billings, a director of the College Park Homeowners Assn., a cluster of 833 homes in northern Irvine, where the tollway will feed cars onto Jamboree Road. “This project must be designed to improve traffic circulation, not create a traffic nightmare.”

Stephen Ignatius, another north Irvine homeowner, also expressed worries about the corridor’s effects on the neighborhood. He estimated that tollway traffic, along with other cars funneling off the Santa Ana Freeway and nearby streets onto Jamboree Road, will be akin to floodwaters racing down a stream.

“We all know if too much water goes down a river it overflows its banks,” Ignatius said, suggesting that traffic would flood into surrounding neighborhoods.

Despite such worries by neighbors, business leaders and other supporters of the roads said construction of the Eastern is necessary to complete the network of highways needed to ensure that Orange County motorists don’t sit in gridlock.

“I’ve watched traffic on the 55 (Costa Mesa Freeway) and the 91 (Riverside Freeway) go from horrible, to worse to unbearable,” said Kelly Ward, an Anaheim Hills resident who spends more than an hour each morning and evening commuting to and from her job in Santa Ana. “I believe the corridors will give relief and provide people with some alternatives.”

The Eastern tollway will connect the Riverside and Santa Ana freeways, with lanes running through the scenic hills east of Orange and Tustin. It will parallel the Costa Mesa Freeway.

Beginning near Gypsum Canyon Road at the Riverside Freeway, it would meander through the rolling terrain to Santiago Canyon Road, where it would split into two legs. The east leg would join the Santa Ana Freeway at the Laguna Freeway, while the other would run through Peter’s Canyon before tying in with Jamboree Road.

Transportation Corridor Agency staff members are busy preparing a document responding to all the various comments made during Thursday’s hearing and another held in December as well as written comments received in recent months. Officials expect to release the document later this month, giving the public a chance to respond on May 14 or in writing before the hearing.

The Eastern is the third of the three tollways to go through the environmental review process. The San Joaquin Hills tollway was approved in March, 1990, but has been tied up in litigation ever since. A northern segment of the Foothill tollway is already under construction, and the southern segment was approved Oct. 10, prompting yet another lawsuit.