Plans to Build Private Toll Roads OKd by Court

Proposals to build California’s first four toll roads on public land in modern times won approval Wednesday from a state appeals court, which rejected claims that the projects would illegally divert state jobs to the private sector.

Unless overturned on appeal, the ruling will resolve all current legal challenges to the projects, three in the south and one in the north. A separate environmental challenge to the longest of the roads, an 85-mile highway from Vacaville to Fremont, was dismissed earlier.

The roads, authorized by a 1989 state law, are to be built and managed by private developers, who would lease the land for 35 years and then return it to the state.

“It removes an obstacle to creating new jobs and infrastructure for California (and) validates an innovative technique for new highway development,” said Geoffrey Yarema, a lawyer for the Southern California developers.

“The court is going along with a popular panacea to public ills--solutions through privatization to government problems,” said Dennis Moss, lawyer for the 4,000-member Professional Engineers in California Government and two taxpayers who sued to block the roadways.

Yarema said ground may be broken this year on one project, four new lanes in the current median strip of California 91 from near Peralta Hills in southern Orange County to the Riverside County line.

The other two Southern California roads are an 11.2-mile link from Anaheim Stadium to Interstate 405 in Orange County, and a 10-mile highway in southern San Diego County from Otay Mesa to existing freeways.