Tax Measures Fuel a Quiet Freeway Construction Boom

Just as the rest of the world was starting to get comfortable with the idea that Southern California, the archetypal kingdom of the private automobile, was starting to devote serious attention--and serious money--to mass transit, Jerry Baxter held another news conference.

Baxter is the Los Angeles regional chief for Caltrans, and his news conference Friday in La Verne announced the approval of funding to build California 30, a $700-million eastward extension of the Foothill Freeway into San Bernardino County.

Baxter often concedes that no one is beating down his door to build more freeways, and says he believes buses and trains are the way to improve transportation in the region now that the freeways are all but built out.

For the record, he considers the California 30 project a “gap closure,” not really a new freeway.

Perhaps. But no matter how one characterizes it, one thing is clear: Southern California is in the midst of another freeway building boom.

Even as the region is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year burrowing subways and laying track for commuter trains, it is also, albeit more quietly, preparing to spend hundreds of millions more from a voter-approved gas tax increase to pour concrete in honor of “King Car.”

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Baxter said after his rain-shortened announcement at the stub end of California 30. “It’s not the old-style, fancy, new freeway-building. It’s mostly trying to get more out of the freeways we have.”

Actually, there is some old-style freeway building yet to do, as well as a lot of new-style freeway building and some futuristic freeway modernization. Baxter proudly notes that his regional office is administering more than $1 billion in construction contracts.

Besides the California 30 job, the three Caltrans offices in Southern California--together, separately or in conjunction with private developers--have a number of freeway projects under construction or under consideration.

These are being built:

* Completion of the massive Interstate 105 (Glenn Anderson Freeway) project across Los Angeles County.

* Addition of a second deck above the Harbor Freeway downtown.

Under consideration are:

* Extension of the bitterly contested Long Beach Freeway through Alhambra and South Pasadena.

* Construction of an expressway to replace California 126 in Santa Clarita.

* Acquisition of land to build a freeway to connect California 14 and California 18 in Palmdale.

Permission to build three private toll roads in Orange County.

* Expansion of California 71 in San Bernardino County to a six-lane freeway with car-pool lanes.

At the same time, Caltrans plans to spend about $5 billion to essentially rebuild many existing freeways and increase their capacity--adding high-occupancy lanes and installing computerized flow-control devices on virtually all of the 500 miles of freeway in the county.

There is the $500-million Harbor Transitway project that is erecting car-pool and bus-only lanes on a second deck 40 feet above the Harbor Freeway.

Additional second decks, meanwhile, are being contemplated for the jammed Santa Monica and Ventura freeways, where the shoulders and medians have been paved over and gobbled up by commuters. Decks on these freeways could only be built if plans to use medians for elevated rail rapid transit lines fail to materialize.

Caltrans crews are busy demolishing the center divider on the San Diego Freeway so they can add more lanes devoted to buses and car pools. Car-pool lanes also are coming on the San Bernardino and Foothill freeways.

The downtown Traffic Operations Center--a high-tech agglomeration of electronic sensors, closed-circuit television monitors, ramp meter controls, changeable message sign operators and low-power radio transmitters--is scheduled for a $280-million overhaul that will expand its size and let Caltrans improve its “real-time” management of freeway traffic.

The flurry of freeway improvements are elements of Baxter’s three-pronged attack on freeway congestion. Using money generated by gasoline and sales tax increases approved by voters in 1990, Baxter and other Caltrans district directors plan to build some new freeways, expand old ones and manage all of them almost as living organisms instead of lifeless paths.

“Everybody keeps asking me: ‘Where’s our Proposition 111 money?’ ” said Baxter, referring to the 1990 statewide referendum that is doubling the state gas tax to 18 cents a gallon over five years. “Well, here it is. Without that 111 money, we’d be broke.”

Indeed, Caltrans’ sudden revival is due largely to the gas tax measure and to its share of a half-cent sales tax increase approved by Los Angeles County voters the same year.

The money from that sales tax measure, known as Proposition C, is tied up in litigation, but interest from the sequestered funds has been put to use to pay for the popular Freeway Service Patrol.

That fleet of official tow trucks gives free roadside service to more than 500 stranded motorists each day, helping to keep the county’s busiest stretches of freeway from clogging up with disabled cars.

Before these measures were passed, Los Angeles spent so much money just trying to maintain its mature freeway system that it had no money left to take advantage of federal construction grants that could have been used for car-pool lanes and other improvements.

That is one reason--along with the bitter aftertaste left by the disastrous 1976 experiment with the “diamond lane” on the Santa Monica Freeway--that Los Angeles County has no car-pool lanes while Orange County has one of the best networks in the country.

“It got to the point where all of our state dollars were going into maintenance,” Baxter said, “so we got to the point where we didn’t have enough money to match the federal funds. They were willing to pay for 85% of some projects, but we couldn’t come up with our 15%.”

Even with all of the new rail lines being built around Southern California, from the running Metro Blue Line to the Metrolink commuter trains coming this fall and the Metro Red Line subway scheduled to open next year, freeways still are the key to transportation. Transit planners expect that at least 60% of local trips will be by car, even after all rail lines are running.

While the rail lines are supposed to help keep the freeways from slipping into gridlock as the region grows, Baxter wants to further ease freeway congestion by using the roads better.

New freeways will make new connections that allow more efficient use of the freeways, he said. Adding car-pool and bus-only lanes should discourage people from commuting alone, he added. Electronic congestion management techniques, including ramp meters and changeable message signs, will let Caltrans prevent minor fender-benders from growing into full-blown SigAlerts.

Not everyone views the Caltrans plan that rosily. Tim Little of the smog-fighting Coalition for Clean Air sees the $700-million Foothill Freeway extension as just “$700 million worth of smog.”

“If you build it, they will come,” he said. “More freeways mean more drivers and more pollution. It’s a never-ending cycle. . . . That $700 million would buy lots of buses, for example. Or it could fund the entire plan to put a trolley on the Exposition (Boulevard) right of way from downtown to Santa Monica.

“We support the car-pool lanes,” he added, “but we categorically oppose any additional (regular) lanes.”