Time for Road Warriors to Cease Firing : * Tollway Agency Has Won the Battle; Now It Can and Should Be Gracious in Victory

There has been a lot of controversy over the San Joaquin Hills tollway, and gritty determination to get the road built in the face of stiff opposition has been a necessary survival technique for tollway planners. But the Transportation Corridor Agencies have seemed at times more like road warriors than road builders. The tollway officials need to be looking for ways of building constructive relationships, even with the vanquished.

Not all of this is the agency’s fault. There is political hay to be made for community politicians who take issue with some aspect of the road. For example, the Newport Beach City Council recently went along with an argument made by one of its number to reconsider membership in the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency. It wanted a guarantee that a bypass road would be built to accommodate residents who otherwise would have to pay a toll on a section of Newport Coast Drive that is now free. In fact, the agency always has intended to build the bypass, and has agreed to keep the Newport Coast Drive section free until it gets built.

But the tollway people’s relationship with Laguna Beach is another matter, and worthy of some better fence-mending. There is no secret that the city long has regarded the tollroad’s proposed swath across Laguna Canyon Road with all the enthusiasm of a community about to lose its soul to urban renewal. The nail in the coffin--at least as the Transportation Corridor Agency appeared to see it--was Mayor Lida Lenney’s decision to speak at an anti-tollway rally at UC Irvine in June.

Lenney has made no secret of her feelings. Nevertheless, the response of this quasi-public agency, charged with building toll roads to serve the residents of Orange County, was somewhat imperious. Having won the larger battle to get the road built, the agency decided to stick it to Laguna Beach by refusing to meet with city officials on ways to reduce the road’s impact on Laguna Canyon. In effect, it has taken the position that it will shut out the critics from a process that is very much the public’s business.

It should come as no surprise that after opposing the road, resigned city officials now would like to have their views considered on the critical design of the interchange at Laguna Canyon Road. In politics, winners and losers must carry on to live side by side another day. It may be that the agency has an “aesthetics committee” to study the interchange, but it would be responsive public policy to allow Laguna Beach a seat at the table.