SOUTH COUNTY : Highway Tolls to Be Foregone in Disasters

Collection of tolls on the planned San Joaquin Hills tollway can be suspended during public safety emergencies such as the recent Laguna Canyon wildfire, because slowdowns at toll booths could delay the arrival of help or the evacuation of people in danger, officials decided Thursday.

Due to open in 1997, the $1.1-billion toll road will provide an expressway connection between the Corona del Mar Freeway near John Wayne Airport and Interstate 5 near San Juan Capistrano.

One-way tolls along the full length of the corridor are expected to be $2.

But if there is an emergency, “we do not want to make the situation worse than it already is” by making people slow down to pay the fare, said Lisa Telles, a spokesperson for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which is building the six-lane tollway.

The San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency board unanimously approved the measure Thursday, giving the agency’s chief executive officer authority to suspend fee collections, a decision that could be reached in less than 15 minutes.

The board that oversees the Foothill and Eastern tollway projects approved similar measures in December.

The Laguna Beach fires in October focused attention on the need for an emergency toll policy. Telles said numerous traffic jams formed on smaller roads around Laguna when people were trying to flee the firestorm.

Waiving the tolls on a wider thoroughfare “would let people who are already concerned about their homes and their families” gain quicker mobility, Telles said.

The 17.5-mile tollway, intended to ease chronic traffic congestion problems in South County, has been the target of lawsuits and protests from environmental groups who say the project will destroy fragile wildlife habitat.

In August, just days before construction work on the tollway was scheduled to begin, U. S. District Judge Linda McLaughlin temporarily halted construction work on a segment of the toll road pending a Jan. 24 hearing on the adequacy of the project’s environmental impact studies.

McLaughlin ruled that construction could only begin on the northern and southern ends of that road, where major development has already occurred.

McLaughlin recently postponed consideration of the tollway agency’s argument that her injunction is no longer necessary since the October firestorm destroyed much of the habitat it was intended to protect.