Driving Points Home on Foothill Tollway

* The writers of May 10 letters made excellent points about the pointless toll roads. However, the subject of need requires a little expansion.

An examination of the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies’ own data by a reputable highway transportation consulting firm, engaged by several California and national environmental groups, found that traffic on the I-5 was reduced by only 5% by the southern extension of the Foothill toll road.

This is the main sticking point in the TCA’s proof of purpose and need to the federal oversight agencies.

The data was based on the assumption of no induced development along the road, which of course is unrealistic. Once this road is built, development on the now pristine 35,000 acres it traverses will destroy this small gain and cause the traffic on the I-5 to resemble that on the Riverside Freeway at the connector for the north end of this toll road.

Any Southern California driver can testify that freeway junctions are sources, not relievers of congestion.

One can easily predict the ultimate effect on San Clemente.

The conclusion, based on the TCA’s data and on direct experience, must be that roads like this one are the cause of, not the solution to, our transportation problems.

DAVID PERLMAN

Laguna Beach

* I am simply amazed when I read letters from the people of San Clemente about the proposed extension of the Foothill toll road.

They complain about the erosion of open space by more houses and about added traffic, but they all clearly miss the point.

It’s not the road that brings the growth, it’s the growth that brings the road. If they truly cared about open space and traffic, they would have stopped their City Council from approving 4,000 homes and a Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere.

Now that they have the homes and the added tax revenues that go with them, they want to stop the toll road. They would just prefer to dump their problems on the residents of cities to the north, making our traffic problems worse while they get to enjoy all that bonus tax money.

Sorry. San Clemente created the traffic, now provide a means of dealing with it.

ROBERT LOBUE

Aliso Viejo