City Files Claim Over Traffic

Before dawn, the first commuters hurtle through Corona’s streets at speeds of up to 75 mph. As rush hour builds, gridlock sets in, jamming the city’s main thoroughfares with motorists, many of them out-of-towners taking shortcuts to bypass the congested Riverside Freeway as they head to their jobs in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Sometimes the morning traffic is so bad, Leo Arroyo says he can’t even get out of his own driveway. Arroyo, 54, who commutes to the San Fernando Valley, lives on Ontario Avenue, one of the most popular cross-town routes to avoid the clogged freeway.

“The bumper-to-bumper traffic makes it impossible to leave,” Arroyo said. “It’s really a problem, and it’s getting worse.”

Corona city officials feel Arroyo’s pain. On Thursday, they filed a legal claim against Caltrans that seeks to compensate Corona for traffic congestion allegedly related to the four privately owned toll lanes on the Riverside Freeway in Orange County. The action is a prelude to a lawsuit.

“We are fed up with the congestion and people cutting through town by our homes, schools, churches and retail centers,” said City Councilman Jeff Miller. “Our citizens see the state allocating millions of dollars elsewhere for freeway construction. What do our citizens see in Corona? Nothing.”

At issue is a state agreement that allowed 10 miles of toll lanes between the Costa Mesa Freeway in Anaheim and the Riverside-Orange County border. The 91 Express Lanes opened in 1995.

Six years earlier, the California Private Transportation Co., a company that owns and operates the toll lanes, entered into a franchise agreement with Caltrans that prohibits the state from making freeway improvements that might draw motorists away from the toll lanes.

Corona officials say the non-compete agreement, which gives the express lane company veto power over widenings, has effectively stopped Caltrans from doing anything to reduce congestion on the Riverside Freeway through Corona. As a result, they say, commuters are cutting across city streets to avoid long delays on the freeway during rush hour.

“Caltrans intentionally created the traffic on the 91 to force a demand for the toll lanes,” said Jeffrey Dunn, an attorney representing the city. “The agency promised not to widen the freeway through Corona for 35 years. They even call that section of highway the ‘absolute protection zone.’ ”

Caltrans officials declined to comment on the claim, except to say they are aware of the freeway congestion. “We will just have to see how this plays out,” said Rose Melgoza, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Supporters of the express lanes, however, blame the congestion on rapid population growth in Riverside County, one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation. Toll lanes, they say, are part of the solution, not the problem.

Currently, the Riverside Freeway, which runs through narrow Santa Ana Canyon, is one of the most congested in Southern California. Every workday, about 250,000 motorists use the highway during peak periods.

Because the vast majority of commuters live in Riverside County and work in Orange County, the traffic flow is almost entirely westbound in the morning and eastbound in the evening.

The worst stretch is known as the Corona Bottleneck, which starts at Interstate 15 in Riverside County and ends across town at Green River Drive, the last entrance to the freeway in Corona.

City officials say that thousands of motorists resort to Corona’s streets in an attempt to bypass the bottleneck. They estimate that 40% to 65% of the drivers are from Riverside County cities to the east and south of Corona.

Officials in Corona say the increased traffic on city streets has contributed to at least 16 problems that have hurt the quality of life in town. Air pollution has increased, they say, as well as response times for police and firefighters. According to the claim, the congestion has lowered property values and increased street maintenance costs by $10 million to $20 million over the last decade.

“You can live two blocks from the Green River entrance to the 91, but it can take you 40 minutes to get there,” said Deputy City Manager Beth Groves. “If you live here, the majority of your commute is the time spent getting out of town.”

Councilman Miller, an insurance agent who drives 30 miles to his office in Placentia, estimates that it can take him up to 20 minutes just to reach the freeway from his home. Then, it can take another 40 minutes to reach the city limits.

“I know what it’s like to be late for my daughter’s piano lessons, and I know what it’s like to be late for dinner,” said Miller, whose election campaign last year stressed the city’s growing traffic problems. “We have got to do something.”

Police say the congestion has resulted in more tickets, accidents and road rage by frustrated motorists. Sgt. John Burns, head of the city’s traffic division, says he has to devote far more officers to traffic control during rush hour than he would like.

“We’ve had shoving matches, and bottles thrown at cars,” he said. “It takes over half our traffic division to deal with this, and it pulls resources away from other problems we’d like to get to a lot sooner.”

The claim states that Caltrans tried to widen the freeway in 1998, but the California Private Transportation Co. sued the agency, invoking its right to veto projects. Both sides settled the case in 1999, and Caltrans dropped the widening project.

Although the claim seeks an unspecified amount in compensation, Dunn said the potential damages could be enormous. He noted that a San Diego jury recently awarded a developer more than $120 million in damages after city and county planning decisions increased truck traffic near his business park.

“That was one person and one property,” Dunn said. “Here, we are talking about an entire city.”

Caltrans has six months to reject or accept the claim. The California Private Transportation Co. is not named in the action. If the claim is rejected, the city has the right to sue.

Defenders of the toll lanes say that increasing congestion on the Riverside Freeway is not the result of the Express Lane agreement, but rather of planning decisions that have led to an imbalance in the location of housing and jobs.

Riverside has cheaper housing than Orange County and far fewer employers, forcing many people to commute to and from work on the clogged freeway. Like other Riverside-area cities, Corona’s population has rapidly increased--from about 80,000 in 1990 to more than 120,000 today. At the same time, alternative transportation routes linking Orange and Riverside counties have not been built.