Caltrans Let Safety Work Ride to Help 91 Toll Lanes

Caltrans officials knew two years ago that the accident rate on the Riverside Freeway near the 91 Express Lanes was up to 72% higher than that on comparable roads, but the agency recently shelved plans to fix the “severe” safety problem in order to protect business on a parallel private toll road.

As a result, the state agency’s plans to add one eastbound and two westbound lanes near the toll lanes have been delayed for decades. Even minor repairs must wait for at least six years. The work, which Caltrans officials described in legal papers as essential “to protect the traveling public,” had been scheduled to start next September and be completed in 2002.

Caltrans engineers believed the extra lanes would remedy the dangerous merging of traffic along the route by more than 240,000 cars a day, according to a report the agency issued in December 1997.

But last March, Caltrans was thwarted by a lawsuit filed by the toll road operator, California Private Transportation Co., and the two parties quietly reached a settlement in October. The deal has drawn the attention of state legislators demanding to know if public safety has been sacrificed for private profit.

“If Caltrans, which is not motivated by profit, comes to the conclusion that there is a safety problem, then there is a safety problem,” said state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana), who serves on the Senate’s Transportation Committee. “And then to compromise that because of a contractual reasons, well, that’s contrary to the public interest. The public interest is not being served.”

A Times analysis of state accident records shows a troubling pattern of accidents on the road Caltrans officials had set out to improve, with injury accidents increasing by nearly a third over a three-year period that saw national and statewide accidents remaining flat. The leading cause of the accidents was unsafe speed, followed by unsafe lane changes.

The controversial legal settlement is at the heart of growing debate over what role, if any, private roads should play when it comes to building new highways in California. Caltrans agreed to the Riverside Freeway toll lane project a decade ago at a time when it was strapped for money to build new roads. It was the only private road to be built of four approved by the Legislature.

A number of legislators, prompted by reports in The Times, have called for hearings on the recent settlement and the original 1993 franchise agreement that granted the private company the right to operate the 91 Express Lanes. Assemblyman Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), chairman of the Transportation Committee, said Wednesday he will hold hearings on the matter in January.

Caltrans officials now say that agreement barred them from doing the work they had planned.

The $30.6-million construction plan, designed to correct problems with dangerous onramps and offramps along a six-mile stretch of the Riverside Freeway that spans Riverside and Orange counties, had been approved at Sacramento headquarters.

Caltrans at first asserted its legal right to improve the freeway, invoking a safety clause in the original franchise agreement. Responding to the toll road operator’s $100-million lawsuit, attorneys for the agency claimed that the “proper exercise of constitutional police powers reserved to the state of California mandates that this department of state government take every action reasonably necessary to protect the traveling public.”

But the agency did an about-face in October.

Jim Drago, Caltrans spokesman, said the department’s legal team concluded Caltrans would lose in court because the agreement included a “non-compete” clause prohibiting Caltrans from adding lanes.

“Clear and simple, this was an increase in the capacity [of the freeway] which was not allowed under the terms of the franchise agreement,” Drago said.

State transportation officials would not say Wednesday whether they continue to have concerns about the safety of the road or what improvements they were legally allowed to make that would not jeopardize business on the toll road.

“Caltrans is continuing to study the accident data,” said Bill Sessa, deputy secretary for the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, which oversees Caltrans. “It’s likely that somewhere down the road a solution could be proposed.”

Matt Johnson, an attorney for California Private Transportation Co., said there is no safety problem along that stretch of the Riverside Freeway.

“They had absolutely no basis for that project,” Johnson said. “If they had had a basis for it, they wouldn’t have pulled it off the table they way they did.”

The 10 miles of private toll road run parallel to the Riverside Freeway, from the Riverside/Orange County line to the Costa Mesa Freeway. The project has come under intense scrutiny in the last few weeks as the California Private Transportation Co. attempted to sell the road to a nonprofit group for $225 million.

The sale of the money-losing toll lanes fell apart last week, under a barrage of criticism from high-ranking state officials including state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, who launched an investigation into whether the seller and buyer had too close a relationship.

Internal Caltrans documents show that the agency first flagged safety problems on the Riverside Freeway as early as December 1995, when the toll lanes opened.

It took another two years and $5 million for Caltrans to issue a 70-page report detailing the high accident rate and recommending auxiliary lanes be added. Since that report came out, nearly 1,100 crashes have occurred in that area, resulting in four deaths and 334 injuries.

Local Caltrans officials, concerned the problems would get worse with the opening of the connecting Eastern toll road, began working on plans in 1997 to improve the Riverside Freeway. Caltrans obtained funding to begin the project and the toll road operators began protesting the work immediately.

After two years of unsuccessful complaints to top state officials, the company filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit, saying the work would “irrevocably damage their business.” The state agency, they argued, had given up the right to do such work when they signed the 35-year franchise agreement for the toll road.

Despite its initial legal fight, Caltrans agreed to settle in October. The agency said that “although Caltrans believes that safety benefits might result” they could not prove that the work met the safety threshold required by their contract.

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Accidents Increasing on 91

A closer look at accidents along the Riverside Freeway adjacent to the 91 Express toll lanes, which opened in December 1995.

Fatal/Injury Freeway Accidents

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Location ’96 ’97 ’98 Change 91 Fwy. 169 203 216 +28% O.C. 4,451 4,653 4,523 +2% State 59,936 58,860 59,635 -1%

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91 Fwy. Accident Breakdown

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Major Causes ’96 ’97 ’98 Change DUI 9 9 14 +56% Speed 89 104 124 +39% Lane change 4 68 60 +46%

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Computer-assisted reporting by Ray Herndon / Los Angeles Times