No votes for toll road

Re “Road to ruin,” editorial, Jan. 29

As a regular user of the San Onofre State Park and Trestles area, I am opposed to the completion of the damaging Foothill South toll road. It is important to preserve one of the last remaining undeveloped coastal watersheds in Southern California for future generations. Completing the toll road would damage not only water and wave quality but also contribute to the exact problem it is attempting to mitigate: traffic.

If and when the road is completed, it will only encourage more development in areas that were previously natural. Orange County needs more mass-transit options; the most effective way to decrease traffic is to lessen the number of cars using existing roads.

Mark Cole

Redondo Beach

If the proposed toll road through San Onofre State Park is environmentally unacceptable, the alternative of widening Interstate 5 through San Clemente would be equally, if not more, unacceptable. The interstate is already an unsightly, noisy and polluting scar splitting the urban fabric of San Clemente, and widening it with toll lanes would have an unmitigated negative environmental impact on this city.

The proposed toll road is needed to relieve traffic congestion on Interstate 5 and provide an alternative evacuation route for people in San Clemente and in Camp Pendleton in case of an emergency at the nearby San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. A better solution is to move the toll road’s proposed alignment a few hundred feet south, outside the border of the state park.

Ricardo Nicol

San Clemente

The Times is right to call Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on his Orwellian doublespeak with regard to running a toll road down the middle of San Onofre State Beach.

Calling this most-destructive alternative “essential to protect our environment,” as Schwarzenegger did, inverts the truth.

Beyond the political deceptions, let’s not forget the fundamental thing at issue here. A park is a promise, a pledge by one generation to protect a certain special place for the enjoyment of future generations. The San Onofre route for the Foothill South toll road betrays that promise.

Len Gardner

Laguna Woods

quote__03>’I have been moved to participate in my own democracy.’

Erin Fairbanks, Oak Park, Calif.