Meeting Set to Save Toll Road Plan for Extending Freeway

A proposed toll road to extend the Orange Freeway is jeopardized by a lack of progress, and Assemblyman Scott Baugh is trying to form a group of cities and agencies to keep the plan alive.

The Huntington Beach Republican is expected to meet today with representatives of four Orange County cities and three agencies to create a consortium that would stand ready to build the controversial project.

Currently, Greiner Inc., an engineering firm with offices in Santa Ana, has a contract under a 1989 state law to build the private roadway from the end of the Orange Freeway, along the Santa Ana River to the San Diego Freeway.

But Greiner hasn’t been able to obtain financing for the project, and its rights to develop it run out in 2001.

Baugh said he wants to introduce legislation to prevent Caltrans from dropping the Orange extension from a list of approved locations should Greiner fail to make substantial progress by the deadline.

“We don’t want this project to expire without providing some vehicle for the residents of Orange County to avail themselves of this toll road,” Baugh said.

Officials say extending the Orange Freeway would provide an essential link through the heart of Orange County.

But officials worry that the high cost of building the tollway, planned so far as an elevated structure over the Santa Ana River, would boost toll prices too high to attract drivers.

The project also has drawn strong opposition from those who live nearby and fear the impact of noise and traffic. Baugh said some way to ease that impact must be found and approved by the cities involved.

He said his legislation would form a consortium consisting of the county, the Transportation Corridor Agencies, the Orange County Transportation Authority and the cities of Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Fountain Valley.

“Our agency has always been very supportive of the [Orange] extension. It’s a missing link in the transportation system,” said Lisa Mills, OCTA’s executive director.

But Greiner has not given up hope.

“We are still working on trying to get project money,” said Jack Waldron, a Greiner vice president.

Waldron said the company has put “a lot of money and a lot of our time” into developing the project but was unable to secure funding during the Orange County bankruptcy and, previously, the long recession.

The 1989 state law was designed as an experiment in privatizing California’s public highway network. The law gave big business permission to build four toll roads in traffic-snarled sections of the state.

But only one project, a set of toll lanes to relieve traffic along the eastern end of the Riverside Freeway into and out of Orange County, has been built. A second tollway in San Diego County is years behind schedule, and a back-country route in Alameda and Contra Costa counties may be dead.

Until now, the Orange extension--running from the Orange Crush confluence of the Santa Ana, Orange and Garden Grove freeways over the Santa Ana River to the San Diego Freeway--also was believed to be dead. Baugh’s effort would give the consortium a chance to develop the project if Greiner falters.

None of the agencies or city councils in the planned consortium has approved Baugh’s plan yet, but the assemblyman said his partner in putting the group together is Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly. Daly was out of state and unavailable for comment.

Officials in Santa Ana and Fountain Valley said they will be at today’s meeting with Baugh.

“We’re very interested in what the proposal will be,” said Debra Kurita, Santa Ana assistant city manager.