For California, Tolls Herald Return to Old Ways

No tax can operate so fair and so easy, as that of paying a turnpike toll. . . . What can be more just?

--Elkanah Watson, Albany Register, 1796

And so they’ve come.

Turnpikes. In California of all places, where folks once embraced the idea about as warmly as a spilled truckload of Crisco on the Santa Ana Freeway during rush hour.

In Orange County of all places, where tough-minded conservatism means going anywhere, doing anything, as long as you can do it in your basic overpriced automobile and roam freely.

No more.

As of next Sunday, the state’s first modern tollway opens to traffic between Irvine and Lake Forest. Oh, it will be free during a get-acquainted period, but a 50-cent toll on the first 3.2-mile stretch will kick in Nov. 1. And four other toll-road projects are being talked about or underway elsewhere in the county.

Some won’t be celebrating when the ribbon is cut and the cars pony up to the automatic vehicle identification sensors and automated coin machines.

Assemblyman Rusty Areias (D-San Jose) called them a “U-turn to yesterday” during the heated legislative debate in 1987 on Orange County’s toll-road projects. Another legislator railed that tolls are “Un-Californian.”

Not so, say transportation historians.

“We had plenty of toll roads in California until people made a fuss about them during the Great Depression,” G.J. (Pete) Fielding, a professor at UC Irvine and former director of the UC system’s Institute of Transportation Studies. “There were several of them on mountain crossings, dating from the Gold Rush.”

Indeed, the old covered wagon road through Donner Pass in the high Sierra was one such byway. It is now U.S. Highway 50.

The most recent toll ban was in 1929. Until now, the exceptions, say California Department of Transportation officials, were limited to toll bridges and a portion of the scenic, 17-mile drive near Carmel.

Still, despite all the hoopla about Orange County’s high-tech tollway with its bill-your-credit-card toll collection system, Fielding is not moved.

“The Foothill project is nothing spectacular,” Fielding said. “It’s simply another way of financing highways other than through fuel taxes . . . which Orange County was late in getting into the game on, in planning and designing its highway system. This is really a return to the old ways of the 19th Century.”

Some historical sources indicate the first officially chartered toll road was built in 1792. It belonged to a private firm and the road connected Philadelphia and Lancaster. In the 1800s, most turnpikes were privately owned, with about 2,000 individual companies in the toll-road business.

Even back then there was dissent. A turnpike opponent declared in the Albany Register that “turnpiking is hostile to sound republican maxims” and “evinces a transition . . . from freedom toward despotism.”

Critics feared these companies would control all access to certain communities and gouge the public, but soon the states themselves were involved. In 1806 Pennsylvania began purchasing stock in turnpikes, which at the time were usually plank roads that wore out in three or four years.

The first 20th-Century toll roads were parkways in New York and Connecticut, built after 1925.

“The first modern-day toll roads in the United States were planned and developed in the 1930s,” according to a publication of the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, which advocates private rather than public ownership of toll roads.

The toll road concept gained a major boost in 1940 with the opening of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, followed by the Maine and New Hampshire turnpikes, and in 1951, the New Jersey Turnpike--perhaps the best known. In 1953 it was carrying more traffic than planners had projected for the year 1975. All were built by public agencies.

Financing has always been a problem. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, for example, has had difficulty retiring its bond debt, but will do so, most experts agree.

One frequent complaint from opponents is that once tolls are imposed, they almost never come off, although Orange County has pledged to remove them when the bonds are retired.

Today, about 30 states have tolls of one kind or another. Eleven have only toll bridges or toll tunnels. Five have toll roads, but no fees on bridges or tunnels, and 14 have a combination.

Aside from the three public toll roads being built in Orange County, there are two privately financed projects here as well. In addition to California, Virginia and Texas are experimenting with them, and Washington and Minnesota have passed legislation permitting private tollways. Such roads are common in Europe.

The first of the privatized tollways is being constructed in the dirt median of the Riverside Freeway between the Riverside County border and the Costa Mesa Freeway. Another is undergoing environmental reviews. If approved, it will be constructed on stilts in the middle of the Santa Ana River, as an extension of the Orange Freeway to the Corona del Mar Freeway near John Wayne Airport.

UCI’s Fielding said he believes the Riverside Freeway project, due to open in three years, is the one with global ramifications because commuters will be offered discounts to drive during less-busy periods. “That’s the project the Europeans and everyone else are watching,” Fielding said.

Interestingly, the Riverside Freeway project is being built by a private company under an exclusive franchise from the state of California, as would have been the case during the 19th Century.

Said Fielding: “I think we’re headed back to the future.”

Tollway Timeline

The Foothill Transportation Corridor has been on the drawing boards for nearly two decades. Here are some important dates:

1974: County launches growth and traffic studies of the north El Toro and South County areas, reaches conclusion that more roads will be needed soon.

1981: Board of Supervisors adds Foothill Transportation Corridor to county’s master plan of arterial highways.

1984: Voters reject Proposition A, a ballot initiative that would impose a one-cent sales tax to help finance the Foothill, Eastern and San Joaquin corridors as freeways.

1986: Transportation Corridor Agencies is formed by understandings among county and the various cities along the routes of the three corridors. Agreements are finalized to levy 48.5% of construction costs as new development fees.

1987: State lawmakers, faced with highway funding shortage, approve bill allowing construction of corridors as tollways. Congress agrees to make corridors eligible for 35% federal funding.

1988: State Legislature approves bill making the tollways state highways and obligating the state to pay for maintenance.

1990: Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency board approves final environmental impact report for northern segment of 30-mile Foothill tollway, which will open first.

1991: Environmental impact review for 15-mile southern section of Foothill tollway is approved despite protests by environmentalists. Congress exempts tollways from law barring construction of new highways through parks.

1992: Construction of first 3.2-mile Foothill segment begins.

1993: Ground broken for second segment of Foothill tollway, to run from Portola Parkway near Lake Forest to Antonio Parkway in Rancho Santa Margarita.

Sources: Transportation Corridor Agencies, Times reports

Researched by Jeffrey A. Perlman / Los Angeles Times