Congestion’s Root Clause

Transportation officials are learning a lesson that consumers have long known: Some bargains can wind up being not only more expensive but filled with miles of buyer remorse.

In the case of the 10-mile stretch of the Riverside Freeway from east Anaheim to the Riverside County line, the remorse is in not using public funds to build that stretch of freeway in the first place. And it’s in the need now to try to buy a solution to the traffic woes that initial decision created.

In the early 1990s, the state had big road needs, but few funds to provide them. So, it entered into public-private partnerships to build tollways. The mistake, as history has shown, is the “noncompetition clause” put into the contracts to protect the private owners. It prohibits the state from improving public roadways near the toll lanes if they will draw paying motorists away from the private lanes. The folly of that move has been haunting the state, Riverside and Orange county officials, and especially motorists, ever since.

That 10-mile stretch of private lanes on the Riverside Freeway has become one of the most expensive tollways in the country to drive. Its tolls have been raised seven times in the last five years. And because of the noncompetition clause, the public freeway lanes have become some of the most congested. The problem now is how to keep a bad situation from getting worse.

Riverside County’s approach was legal action. It has sued the toll lane owner and Caltrans, claiming the state has abandoned its responsibility to improve the Riverside Freeway.

The Orange County Transportation Authority is taking a different path. It wants to buy the express lanes.

One problem is that tollway owners say the toll lanes, opened in 1996 at a cost of about $130 million, are not for sale. But they are willing to talk about it. That could mean the purchase is possible.

But at what price? There are few, if any such sales on the books as a guideline. OCTA wants those lanes. The seller knows it. So the asking price, if not as fair to the taxpayers as to the toll lane owner, could limit the county’s options.

The lesson for public agencies in all this is not to grasp at short-range solutions that can cause even tougher long-range problems.

Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who also sits on the OCTA board, has aptly termed the tollway “a failed experiment.” It has proved to be a road-clogging mistake that shouldn’t be repeated on other routes, like the proposed extension of the Orange Freeway to the San Diego Freeway.

Buying the lanes is a good approach. But if a deal can’t be made, perhaps a fair price could be worked out for OCTA to buy out the noncompetition agreement. That could at least clear the way for whatever improvements can be made to help move motorists through the traffic-choked canyon.