NEWPORT BEACH : Councilman Ousted From Tollway Panel

Upset by a proposed toll booth to be built on Newport Coast Drive, the City Council this week voted to oust Councilman John C. Cox Jr., its representative to the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, and replace him with Councilman Phil Sansone.

Sansone was chosen because he has fought to remove the toll booth, which he says the tollway agency neglected to tell the city about until it was too late to change.

Sansone represents Corona del Mar businesses and residents who fear that the thousands of motorists coming from South County daily will opt to avoid paying a 50-cent toll and travel on the toll-free Coast Highway instead.

Cox, who will lose his chairmanship of the agency’s Board of Directors, has maintained that the toll booth was never a secret and has in the past lambasted Sansone and others for making an issue of it.

The council voted 4-3 to make that change, with Cox, Councilwoman Janice A. Debay and Mayor Clarence J. Turner dissenting.

In addition, the council asked the corridor agency to commission a traffic study of the impact of the proposed toll booth. The council also asked the agency to consult its attorneys to explore the legal avenues for challenging the toll booth. Finally, the city will ask Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) to introduce legislation regarding the toll booth. “The people of Corona del Mar are very emotional about” the toll booth, said Sansone, who acknowledged that it will be very tough to get it removed from the project. “I am only one of 12 votes” on the agency’s Board of Directors.

“Everyone in Corona del Mar wants the council to preserve our bypass,” said resident Jean Morris, referring to Newport Coast Drive, which is an alternative route around Corona del Mar. “That darned toll booth is the biggest issue in Corona del Mar. . . . Once the concrete is poured, you can’t change things.”

Donald H. Glasgow, president of the Corona del Mar Chamber of Commerce, told the council that his organization also supports elimination of the booth.

The $1.1-billion tollway is scheduled to open in 1997 and connect the terminus of the Corona del Mar Freeway near John Wayne Airport to Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano. At its Sept. 9 meeting, Sansone will be sworn in as a voting member of the Board of Directors and a new chairman will be chosen, a position Cox has held since 1989.

The toll booth issue arose because the tollway will occupy a stretch of pavement near MacArthur Boulevard that now serves as the northern terminus of Newport Coast Drive.

Once the toll road is built, Newport Coast Drive will terminate at the tollway. To complete a journey, for example, a motorist driving north on Newport Coast Drive would have to enter the tollway and pay the 50-cent fee to drive the eight blocks to MacArthur Boulevard, unless a proposed bypass using surface streets is constructed.

The proposed bypass is controversial, however, because to date county officials have not determined who will pay for it, and Sansone, among others, said he doubts the bypass will be convenient enough to maintain Newport Coast Drive’s current popularity.