Airport, Toll Road Bills Offered : Legislator Proposes That Motorists Pay for Freeways

SACRAMENTO —  California’s first public toll roads could be constructed in Orange County under legislation introduced Monday by Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach).

Acknowledging that he faces opposition and skepticism from several quarters, including some close allies, Frizzelle said he “is rising to the governor’s challenge for new and innovative ideas.”

Frizzelle’s bill, if approved, could allow the proposed Eastern and Foothill expressways--placed on a back burner since the voters’ overwhelming defeat of a transportation sales-tax measure last year--to be given new priority on the county’s long wish list of transportation projects.

Regulated Like a Utility

Under Frizzelle’s bill, either or both of the expressways--or one of them along with the proposed San Joaquin Hills roadway through the south county coastal foothills--could be built by a corporation, which would be regulated like a utility.

Local transportation officials said the San Joaquin Hills project is not a likely candidate for consideration as a toll road, however, because it is now eligible for federal funds, and it would not be eligible if it were a toll road.

Frizzelle, whose bill would allow the county to build one or two toll roads, said several Republican colleagues from Orange County were cool to his idea but said he hopes to persuade them to change their minds.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Paul Carpenter (D-Cypress) signed the bill as a co-author and has agreed to carry it in the Senate should it survive the Assembly.

“There is no other alternative for the immediate development of those corridors,” said Carpenter, who several years ago sponsored a similar toll-road bill that died in a Senate committee.

Stan Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Transportation Commission, agreed that the toll road idea “has merit.”

He said the commission is about to launch a study of the financial feasibility of tolls to finance the Eastern and Foothill transportation corridors.

Rough estimates placed the combined costs of the two roadways at $669 million. Neither was expected to be completed for eight or nine years, but they were pushed even further into the future after the defeat in June, 1984, of Proposition A, the sales tax issue, Oftelie said.

The Foothill roadway is proposed between Orange and San Juan Capistrano, roughly parallel to the Santa Ana Freeway. Transportation planners have not yet agreed on a specific route for the Eastern Corridor, but it was generally planned to traverse undeveloped lands between the Riverside Freeway and Irvine.

State transportation officials said the roads would be the state’s first publicly maintained toll roads. There are nine toll bridges around the state. There also is one notable private toll road, Seventeen-Mile Drive on the Monterey Peninsula.