NEWPORT BEACH : City Gives Up Fight Against Tollbooth

City officials have given up their fight to remove the tollbooth planned for Newport Coast Drive, where it will become a part of the San Joaquin Transportation Corridor in 1997.

Councilman Phil Sansone, who is the city’s representative to the tollway agency, told fellow City Council members Monday afternoon: “I think we are up a creek. There is no way (members of the Transportation Corridor Agency governing board) are going to change their minds.”

Sansone said the best the city could hope for was that an acceptable toll-free bypass be built connecting MacArthur Boulevard and the free portion of Newport Coast Drive.

Sansone and residents of Corona del Mar are concerned that motorists will avoid paying a 50-cent toll by simply using the toll-free Pacific Coast Highway and bogging down traffic through Corona del Mar.

“Our emphasis now is to assure there is action” on a toll-free bypass, he said.

The Transportation Corridor Agency has told Sansone that the tollbooth will stay because it is needed to help repay the bonds issued to build the $1.1-billion tollway, scheduled to open in 1997.

This tollbooth has become such a contentious issue in Newport Beach that the City Council voted this summer to remove Councilman John C. Cox Jr., their previous representative to the corridor agency, and replace him with Sansone, who promised to fight harder to get rid of the tollbooth.