Bogus Toll Booth Name Drives Motorists to Distraction

Operators of the new San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor have been getting lots of questions lately from people curious about a name.

It appears on the toll plaza that serves as headquarters to about 40 toll collectors in Irvine’s Bommer Canyon. Blazoned proudly across the building are the words “Catalina View Plaza.”

There’s just one problem: The building doesn’t face Catalina. In fact, it faces the other direction. And it wouldn’t matter a whit if it did face Catalina, because a fairly large hill blocks any view of the ocean.

“It’s more like Mt. Baldy View Plaza,” Lisa Telles, a spokeswoman for the toll road builder, quipped. And even that assumes an unusually--actually spectacularly--clear day.

So why the whimsical name? Blame it on the creative vision of engineers, say officials of the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which built and operate the road.

Seems that there actually are spots along the 15-mile toll road from San Juan Capistrano to Newport Beach from which the distant island can be seen. And one of them, probably somewhere near the new headquarters building, was a favorite lunch spot for early surveyors and engineers working on the project.

“The view was spectacular,” swore Greg Henk, the agency’s executive vice president of design and construction, “so the early surveyors came up with the name.”

Changes in the construction plans later made the name bogus. To accommodate the land’s natural contours, the route was moved farther inland. Portions of it were dug deeper into the ground, effectively obscuring Catalina views. And, finally, the Catalina View Plaza building was spun around to face the mountains rather than the sea.

“By the time we got the realignment,” Henk said, “we had lost most of the view.”

But Henk wouldn’t change the building’s wistful name even if he could.

“It beats a lot of alternatives we could have come up with,” he said. “It could have been called the ‘2,000-square-foot cast-in-place foundation building.’ ”

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Traffic planners in San Diego County are engaged in an unusual experiment that their Orange County counterparts are watching closely.

Beginning today, commuters will be able to pay for the privilege of driving solo in the carpool lanes along eight miles of Interstate 15.

“The lanes are not filled up,” said Mario Oropeza, senior transportation planner for the San Diego Assn. of Governments, which is conducting the three-year experiment for the federal government. “There is available space. Ideally, we’d like them to be totally jampacked with cars, but until that happens we have this space.”

To help fill it, Oropeza’s agency is charging commuters $50 a month to drive solo in the carpool lane. But don’t get your checkbook out just yet; the permits were sold out the first day they appeared.

“That tells us something,” Oropeza said. “We have a waiting list.”

Here’s how it works: For $50 a month, the agency sells a decal for your windshield that allows you to drive solo in the carpool lane of Interstate 15 in northeast San Diego County roughly between Escondido and downtown San Diego. To discourage fraud, the agency will issue a new decal each month, with preference given to those already holding permits.

Because the program is experimental, Oropeza said, only 500 decals have been sold so far, all of which were gone by 4 p.m. Nov. 12, when they first became available. If traffic permits, he said, up to 600 more will be distributed later.

After six months, according to Oropeza, the decals will be replaced by transponders that will automatically trip an alarm if the user has not paid the monthly fee. And in the second year, he said, the monthly fee will be replaced by a per-trip rate automatically debited by electronic scanners.

“We’ve got to be very careful that the number of cars we allow onto the HOV lanes does not negatively impact the travel time of car-poolers,” Oropeza said. “If our census shows that the carpool lanes are filling up, we will merely raise the per-trip cost higher and higher until fewer people use it.”

All proceeds, which are expected to reach about $3.5 million over three years, will be used to make other transit and carpool lane improvements, he said.

“This is the only project of its kind in the nation,” Oropeza said, “so, naturally, there is a lot of interest.”

Among those interested are officials at the Orange County Transportation Authority, who last week hired a consultant to study the concept for Orange County.

“We’re watching their project,” agency spokesman John Standiford said. “It would be a major change in delivering transportation services to the public.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County Edition, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to (714) 966-7711 or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.