Toll Road Builders Storm Ahead of Schedule

The El Nino storms that destroyed property and devastated lives don’t seem to have derailed the plans of some local contractors. Despite the bad weather, they expect to complete the toll road from Anaheim Hills to Irvine 14 months early.

“This is great news for everybody,” said Lisa Telles, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which is building two toll roads in South County.

One of them, the 30-mile Foothill Transportation Corridor connecting Irvine to Rancho Santa Margarita, already has a 7.5-mile segment open, with a larger section expected to be completed late next year, and the full road open by 2003.

The other toll road, the 24-mile Eastern Transportation Corridor, was scheduled to be completed in late 1999. Instead, planners say, they expect it to open in October, more than a year ahead of schedule.

“People who thought they would have construction going on in their neighborhoods through 1999 won’t,” Telles said. “And the agency will have revenues coming in” that it didn’t know it would.

Builders attributed the dramatic step-up in scheduling to the unprecedented speed with which the designs of the projects were approved by overseeing agencies, such as the state Department of Transportation and the TCA. “The design approvals gave us a five- to six-month jump,” said Pat Stricklin, president of Silverado Constructors, which is building the Eastern Transportation Corridor.

“Then we were able to aggressively pursue the work and get a lot done in a shorter amount of time.”

Much of the motivation, Stricklin said, stemmed from the fact that his company will be allowed to keep 70% of revenue from operation of the toll road prior to its original opening date. “Obviously we want to take advantage of as much of those net revenues as we can,” he said. “We believe it could be a substantial amount of money. Obviously, that’s an incentive.”

Stricklin said it was too early to predict how much the company stands to make from the early opening.

A similar incentive contributed to the rapid construction of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, the final segment of which opened in November 1996, three months ahead of schedule. Six months later, the road, which runs from Newport Beach to Laguna Niguel, was generating 51% less traffic than projected--leading to some uncertainty regarding its financial viability. Those early projections were revised as part of the requirements for last year’s refinancing of the bonds that built the road. And today, Telles said, the toll road is handling about 65,000 cars a day--30% more than a year ago and only 10% below the revised projections.

She would not discuss current performance compared to the original projections, describing them as outdated and no longer relevant. “Traffic continues to increase each month,” she said.

TCA officials hope to attract more commuters to the Eastern and Foothill tollways, which they expect to generate at least $52.6 million in combined revenue by fiscal 2000. The busiest part of the two roads--from the Riverside Freeway to Chapman Avenue on the Eastern Corridor--is expected to handle at least 48,000 cars a day by then, Telles said.

Meeting the expected October opening will depend partially on the weather, Stricklin said. “That October date will have to be validated when the last storm is cleared,” he said. “Right now we still believe that we can make it, but if we continue to get one storm after another it will, at some point, affect that date.”

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New Ways to Drive

The status of Orange County’s toll roads:

Eastern Transportation Corridor

Length: 24 miles

Projected completion: October

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Foothill Transportation Corridor

Length: 30 miles

Projected completion: 1999

Section under environmental study:

Construction begins: 2001

Projected completion: 2003

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San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor

Length: 15 miles

Completed: November 1996

Source: Transportation Corridor Agencies