Counties Settle Dispute Over Toll Lanes

Ending months of acrimony, Riverside County transportation officials settled their differences with Orange County on Wednesday and agreed to allow a private firm to build toll lanes down the center median of the traffic-choked Riverside Freeway.

The Riverside County Transportation Commission, which for the past year had threatened to sue if the $100-million project went forward, narrowly approved a memorandum of agreement that clears the way for the toll lanes.

Jack Reagan, RCTC executive director, said the commission was not overjoyed with the project, but a 4-3 majority of its members decided to go forward because the agreement provides enough concessions.

“There’s no celebration in Riverside tonight,” Reagan said. “We’re not ever going to say it’s a good project. We just tried to make as silky a purse as we could out of a cow’s ear.”

Gerald S. Pfeffer, president of California Private Transportation Corp., the firm planning the project, said the agreement should allow his outfit to begin building later this year. Some of the lanes could be open by 1994, with the project fully operating by 1995.

“We’re very pleased that we’ve reached this important milestone,” Pfeffer said.

Two toll lanes in each direction will extend for 10 miles from the Costa Mesa Freeway east to the Orange County line. From there, the toll project would link up with car-pool lanes now being built along the freeway in Riverside County. Those lanes are expected to be finished by 1993.

When the toll project was first approved in 1990, Riverside County officials were angered because it would require thousands of Inland Empire motorists who cascade onto the freeway each day to pay twice to use the lanes--once for the extra half-cent sales tax that county voters approved to help pay for the car-pool lanes, and again with the fees for the toll lanes.

The agreement among Riverside and Orange counties, Caltrans and California Private Transportation stipulates that vehicles with three or more occupants will ride for free on the toll lanes.

Riverside County had pushed for defining car pools as two or more passengers in the toll lanes, because that will be the definition for the other car-pool lanes.