Pay Lanes Have Taken Their Toll

Re “Going the Wrong Way on Express Lanes,” Jan. 23:

Byron de Arakal’s outrageous op-ed piece endorsing continued toll road development could not be further off the mark.

To state that the California Private Transportation Co. “assumes all the risk” is completely untrue.

The driving public, the taxpayers and the bond investor assumed all of the risk; the company has nothing to lose.

Motorists are risking their safety by driving on unsafe nearby freeways that the company has secretly contracted with Caltrans to not improve or repair.

What private enterprise is allowed to contract with competitors to not improve or maintain the competitor’s product?

If the transportation company fails to make a profit, they just walk away and let the bond investors sit on their defaulted bonds. If anything can be salvaged, it will take tax revenues to pay for the repair.

Now another toll road fiasco is in the making: the Transportation Corridor Agencies’ attempt to extend the Foothill toll road bordering San Clemente to join up with the San Diego Freeway.

The citizens of South Orange County would, not only risk, they will lose a popular state park, access to beaches and some of the last remaining open space in the area.

The time has come to recognize the 1989 legislation that empowered Caltrans to forge exclusive franchise agreements with the private sector was a mistake and should be repealed before further damage occurs.

CALVIN HECHT

San Clemente

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Allowing the private development of toll lanes in the median strip of the Riverside Freeway was a mistake to begin with, and they have been losing money from the beginning.

Now the businessmen who concocted this scheme want the state to bale them out with a suspect sale and refinancing plan that will net them a profit of some $90 million.

Even with such a bailout, it is not likely that the lanes would be profitable without deliberately withholding needed improvements on the existing freeway, thus forcing more traffic into the toll lanes at increased fees.

When all of this has been thoroughly investigated and the culprits appropriately dealt with, the state should assume the initial indebtedness for the construction of these lanes and put them into the freeway system.

GORDON WILDE

Banning