NEWPORT BEACH : Effort to Eliminate Tollway Booths Fails

Despite pleas from Newport Beach residents, an Assembly committee in Sacramento turned its back Monday on efforts by an Orange County lawmaker to eliminate toll booths planned for a stretch of Newport Coast Drive slated to become part of the San Joaquin Hills tollway.

The bill by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) got only one vote in the Assembly Transportation Committee, far short of the nine needed for the measure to move on.

An angry Ferguson charged during the hearing that tollway officials had hatched “a very involved scheme” to impose a toll on motorists who currently use Newport Coast Drive for free.

He said the tollway agency has yet to conduct proper hearings on the issue.

Residents of Corona del Mar are concerned that the tolls will divert traffic to Coast Highway as an alternative route, thus increasing congestion there.

In addition, they question whether the county has the authority to turn a publicly owned road over to the tollway agency.

They want the county to build a free alternative to the tollway along the route of Newport Coast Drive.

Michael Stockstill, a tollway agency spokesman, told the Assembly panel that the toll booth issue is among hundreds that were discussed during numerous public hearings in recent years.

“This issue was known,” Stockstill said, adding that efforts to reopen the debate would “provoke lengthy and costly litigation” that could delay or derail the tollway project.

Tollway officials contend it would take an endowment of $69 million to generate the income equal to the toll revenue that would be lost if the booths were eliminated.

Ferguson, however, argued that the agency could simply pass the extra cost on to motorists traveling along other parts of the 15-mile tollway, which would connect the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach with Interstate 5 near San Juan Capistrano.