Toll Road Officials Scale Back Usage Projections

At a time when Orange County’s toll road agencies are launching a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign to increase ridership, new documents released Wednesday show toll road officials have dramatically scaled back ridership and revenue projections.

The new figures, part of a bid to refinance about $1.6 billion in bonds on the Foothill and Eastern toll roads, have traffic on the roads lagging as much as 22% behind original projections and revenue over the next 35 years falling as much as 43% short of estimates.

Toll road officials say the numbers were based on 1990 census data that proved overly optimistic about economic growth in the region. Even with a booming economy of late, officials said, the recession earlier this decade slowed growth in the Inland Empire, which had been projected to provide much of the congestion that would make the toll roads desirable alternatives.

“If you’re looking for where something was done not right, the effect of the recession in Riverside and San Bernardino counties was not factored in as much as it should have been,” said Tony Hughes, managing director of Salomon Smith Barney, the investment group that manages the toll agencies’ bonds.

Hughes and Colleen Clark, chief financial officer for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, said they are confident the latest figures are more accurate and defended the earlier estimates.

“We’ve learned a lot and are incorporating all that we’ve learned as we’ve gone along,” Clark said. Toll road officials already refinanced about $1.4 billion in bonds for the San Joaquin Hills toll road, which also lagged far behind original traffic projections. The Foothill/Eastern bonds could go on sale as soon as July 12, if the plan is approved by board members at their meeting July 8 and the market is favorable.