COTO DE CAZA : Tollway Driver Was One in a Million

It wasn’t exactly winning the lottery, but Bill Riechers was happy nonetheless with the $25 he won Tuesday for being the millionth driver to use the Foothill tollway since it opened last October.

Riechers, 42, had just tossed in two quarters at 9:15 a.m. when his car was rushed by Transportation Corridor Agencies officials eager to congratulate him. A startled Riechers wondered, “Did I do something wrong?” but relaxed when told of the honor.

“I would’ve liked to have seen a few more zeros at the end of the $25 check, but at least it makes up for all the money I’ve spent so far to use the road,” Riechers joked.

TCA officials took back the symbolic check and gave Riechers a FasTrak card good for $25, or 50 one-way trips. The card, when used with a transponder, enables motorists to drive through toll collection points at highway speed, while the toll is electronically debited from the driver’s account.

Riechers uses the 3.5-mile toll road about twice weekly when driving from his home in Coto de Caza to a paint manufacturing plant in Irvine. He is a part-owner of the plant. He has been using the road since it opened last October 16, but had never bothered with a FasTrak card.

TCA spokesman Mike Stockstill said that some 9,000 vehicles use the Foothill tollway daily, up from 5,000 vehicles that used the road each day when it opened.

TCA officials hope to eventually build 68 miles of toll roads in southeastern Orange County, including the Eastern, San Joaquin Hills and Foothill transportation corridors.

Tuesday’s brief ceremony at the toll collection point caused Riechers to be late for work at R.E. Hart Labs, which manufactures environmentally safe paints and coatings.

“It threw my schedule off a bit. I’m not used to all this attention, but it was fun being the one-millionth customer,” he said in a telephone interview from his office.