Residents Demand Change in Toll Road Plans

About 100 residents packed City Hall on Wednesday night and demanded that the City Council change a controversial segment of the San Joaquin Hills toll road project.

The protesters, mostly members of the grass roots group called Save Our San Juan, or SOS, claim an interchange to be built in San Juan Capistrano linking the toll road and the freeway will be too near their homes, causing noise, pollution and lower property values. The group passed out flyers that dubbed the interchange the “San Juan Y,” named after the often-congested El Toro “Y” about seven miles north on the freeway.

The group wants to move the interchange north on Interstate 5 toward a commercial area near the tri-city border of Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel and San Juan Capistrano.

“The toll road as it is designed now is going to seriously, seriously adversely impact San Juan Capistrano,” said Robert P. King, a San Juan Capistrano resident and spokesman for the 461-member SOS group.

King lashed out at a city-sponsored consultant’s report that suggested the move of the interchange north would be too costly and impractical. King said the report, written by Irvine-based UMA Engineering Inc., was biased because the company had worked for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which oversees the building of the toll road.

“We feel the consultant was tainted and could not be objective,” King said, adding that despite any action by the council, “we will not end (our fight) tonight.”

Based on the report, the city staff recommended the City Council reject plans for studying an alternative interchange and proceed with local construction that would prepare the city for the arrival of the toll road. Included in that work is the controversial widening of Rancho Viejo Road--a freeway frontage road--that will cut into private property and a Montessori school.

Wednesday’s meeting was the latest in the three-year-long confrontation between the SOS group and city officials over the toll road, a 15-mile, $1.1-billion roadway now under construction that will link the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach and San Juan Capistrano.

The grass-roots group is part of a coalition of environmental organizations formed to fight the toll road.

The group emerged in San Juan Capistrano in early 1991 when the previous City Council supported the toll road project, which will wind through Laguna Niguel and merge with the Interstate 5 freeway near Avery Parkway.

The interchange between the toll road and the freeway is now the thrust of their protest. SOS claims the project will devastate several neighborhoods in the northern section of San Juan Capistrano including Country Hills, Village San Juan, the Spotted Bull communities and Stoneridge.

King and his group claim to have designed an alternative that would have saved further road widening.

But TCA engineers and a city consultant called that alternative impractical because it does not meet federal highway design standards and would adversely affect private property along the highways.

Before the meeting, City Councilman Gil Jones said he was leaning toward going along with the staff recommendation and getting on with the project.

“I think we have reviewed this thing enough and beat it to death,” Jones said. “We have given everyone an opportunity to express their views. Our consultant says it’s not feasible.”