No Free Ride on New Tollway

When the first stretch of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor opens next month from here to San Juan Capistrano, the route will be quicker and more convenient--but it won’t be free.

Although it’s a tradition that motorists on a new tollway are permitted to sample the road for free, Orange County officials say it just won’t work in this case because the seven-mile stretch will draw too much traffic and clog several major intersections.

And if the toll road becomes synonymous with traffic jams, it might just drive motorists away for good.

“We’d keep it free if we could, but we can’t,” said Jerry Bennett, the toll road’s chief engineer. “It would just be a public inconvenience.”

That means tolls will be collected beginning on opening day, July 24. Drivers will pay $1 for the entire route and either 75 cents or 50 cents for shorter trips.

The offices of the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which oversees the toll roads, have been flooded with calls from people wanting to know when the San Joaquin Hills toll road will open and how much it will cost.

The southbound lanes of the first segment will connect Laguna Canyon Road with Interstate 5 at Camino Capistrano. But the northbound lanes won’t be linked with the freeway for another six months. Northbound motorists must exit at Crown Valley Parkway, head west and then make a right on Greenfield Drive in order to continue on the toll road.

By Dec. 10, the entire 15-mile stretch of the toll road is scheduled to be completed between San Juan Capistrano and the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach. A full trip will cost $2.

Toll road officials offered the first 7 1/2-mile stretch of the Foothill Transportation Corridor free for two weeks while drivers got used to the new roadway. Agency spokeswoman Lisa Telles said it was more important to keep tolls off the Foothill initially because it was built far from other freeways in eastern Orange County and hidden from view. Nobody was quite sure where it was or what roads it connected.

“Nobody saw the Foothill under construction the way they have seen the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor being built,” she said.

Once the toll was imposed on the Foothill, however, traffic was cut in half.

Projections for the San Joaquin Hills toll road show similar results: that traffic would double without a toll. Officials said the busiest part of the road was expected to have about 22,000 cars a day if no fee was charged.

A traffic consultant hired to study the issue said the areas that would be hardest hit by traffic would be the intersection of Greenfield Drive and Crown Valley Parkway, the southbound San Joaquin Hills toll ramp intersection with El Toro Road, and both northbound and southbound lanes of Laguna Canyon Road.

Officials from Austin-Foust, a traffic engineering consultant based in Santa Ana, said that congestion “would occur . . . resulting in a severe backup” at Laguna Canyon Road. The problem could extend all the way down to Coast Highway, the engineers said.

Motorists traveling north on Interstate 5 might be tempted to use the toll road as a shortcut to Laguna Canyon Road north to the San Diego Freeway rather than proceed through the often-clogged El Toro Y, where the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways meet.

“The true value of the toll road is when we can open it up completely,” Telles said. “The real benefit is getting from Laguna Hills to John Wayne Airport in 15 minutes.”