Detour Begins--and Fight Never Ends--on Newport Coast Drive

An estimated 20,000 commuters will have a last opportunity Tuesday morning to follow their usual route along Newport Coast Drive connecting Irvine to the coast.

Then, starting about 10 a.m., a 1.5-mile section of the road will close for 12 to 19 months while workers make it part of the controversial San Joaquin Hills toll road.

“We don’t think it’s going to be a major inconvenience,” said Lisa Telles, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which is building the toll road expected to open in 1997. Instead of proceeding along their ordinary route directly to MacArthur Boulevard, she said, commuters will be diverted at Bonita Canyon Road onto a 1 1/4-mile detour that will land them one mile south of the usual connecting point on MacArthur.

“People who drive the road every day hopefully will not be surprised,” Telles said of the route, which already has experienced lane reductions and major traffic slowdowns because of the toll-road construction. “I anticipate that they will be confused for the first week but once we get through that it should be fine.”

Beyond the immediate inconvenience for drivers going a mile out of their way, however, lies the deeper issue of the road’s future function as a feeder for the 15-mile toll road now being built between Newport Beach and San Juan Capistrano. Ever since hearing the initial proposal, Telles said, some regular users of the 6 1/3-mile drive winding inland from Corona del Mar have stridently objected to the idea of paying 50 cents to complete a route that was free.

“Changing what has been a public highway into a private toll road will push more traffic back onto the surface streets around Corona del Mar, a step that will reverse the purpose of building Newport Coast Drive in the first place,” Fern Pirkle, president of an environmental group called Friends of the Irvine Coast, said when the idea was proposed.

Officials of the Transportation Corridor Agencies have countered with studies purporting to show that the toll road will not significantly change traffic patterns in Corona del Mar during peak commuting hours, and that most drivers are likely to pay the toll rather than find alternate routes.

But a group calling itself the Newport Coast Drive Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit challenging the agency’s plans for the road as illegal.

“Longstanding state law prohibits the imposition of a toll for use of an existing public road,” said Jim Toledano, a lawyer representing the group. “Newport Coast Drive is and has been a free public road for a long time; the TCA doesn’t have the authority to charge a toll for a road that has already been in existence.”

Agency officials disagree, contending that the law is on their side. “We do have the legal authority,” Telles said, “and we’ve done everything to comply with the law.”

While the attorneys await a hearing date, engineers working for the county are designing a highway bypass that could render the whole issue moot. Tentatively called the Newport Coast Drive Extension, the proposed 1.5-mile road would extend Newport Coast Drive north and west to Bonita Canyon Drive, thus allowing future commuters to bypass the San Joaquin Hills toll road and avoid the toll.

The plan, which has been approved by the Irvine City Council, calls for the extension to be finished in 1997.

Two outstanding issues, however, threaten to sink the idea. Some Irvine residents staunchly oppose the new bypass as a potential source of additional traffic and noise that could hurt their property values and clog campus roads at nearby UC Irvine. And while roughly half the money for the $10-million project is expected to come from state and toll-road agency sources, the rest would come from the county, which has not fully approved the expenditure.

“We are proceeding full speed ahead on the design, and while we’re designing it we are trying to put together the funding,” said Ken Smith, director of transportation for the county’s Environmental Management Agency. “While the project hasn’t slowed down, certainly any county funding is crucial.”

In the meantime, the transportation agency also is working at full tilt, preparing for Tuesday’s closure

“The detour is very direct,” Telles said, “so that when people get to the end of it, they’ll know where they are. We’re doing an extensive campaign to try and get out the word.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition.