Seeing the Bigger Picture Behind the Toll Roads

* The letters June 27 regarding the $1 fee for toll road transponders were interesting but way off the mark.

The Transportation Corridor Agencies does not want to increase ridership. If this dollar keeps a few more customers off the San Joaquin Hills road, so much the better. Raising the tolls is good too.

We all knew going into this project that to bisect Laguna Canyon would desecrate wilderness areas with a road to nowhere and was a ploy to open more land for development. A freeway project failed, but a toll road project, though hard fought, did not.

To sell the bonds, potential ridership was grossly inflated, with a little scamming of the citizens of Corona del Mar thrown in for good measure.

Remember, the developers and the Board of Supervisors never wanted this toll road in the first place.

The sooner the TCA can default on its bonds, the better they will like it. [They will] turn this road and the debt over to the taxpayer, and Caltrans can make it a freeway.

[Then] those developers who bulldozed their project to completion will move in the heavy equipment to create all those building pads we are so used to seeing flattening the hills.

The dust won’t even settle before a zillion, jammed-together, tile-roofed uglies will pollute the landscape.

MARY LOU RIPLEY

Laguna Beach

* As a refugee from the toll roads of New York, I can only say “You should have known better” to all those protesting the toll road fee increases.

I am amazed at how often history does repeat itself right under our noses, and still people don’t get it.

The toll road was never intended to serve working-class taxpayers, those of us who cannot or will not pay for the privilege.

JAN BARBER-DOYLE

Santa Ana

* When the Transportation Corridor Agencies approved a $1 monthly fee for the more than 60% of Fastrak customers who spend less than $25 a month, Supervisor Tom Wilson said, “To the public, it will appear we are breaking a promise to them.” I’m glad to see that at least one person on the TCA board cares about the public’s feelings.

Hopefully the same feelings will extend to TCA’s promise to honestly protect the environment and way of life of the people and endangered species in San Clemente and the San Mateo Creek habitat.

The only way TCA can keep that promise would be to put an end to any plan to build a toll road in, around, or through San Clemente.

JULIA DEWEES

San Clemente

* Thank you for the excellent article on the proposed toll road (July 4).

It points out that San Onofre State Beach is one of the most visited parks in the state.

Residents of south Orange County rightly fear the sprawl and congestion that the toll road would encourage; and the steelhead trout brings the number of endangered species at stake to eight.

The article ends by quoting the toll road’s representative saying, “We need to look forward to make sure the county remains a good place to live.”

Evidently the Transportation Corridor Agencies’ idea of what constitutes a good place to live doesn’t include open space or state parks.

DEBORAH ABER

Costa Mesa