A Lot Riding on an Experiment : One toll road proposal has regional implications

Some of the early cracks in the California dream, not surprisingly, appeared on the state’s highways. So little public money was spent on keeping them up to date in the 1980s that they became overused and overcrowded. That, in turn, made private toll roads an attractive concept for meeting expanding need. But privately built and operated roads have remained until now an idea in need of testing in the marketplace of California’s freeway culture.

Now Orange and Riverside counties have reached agreement on putting toll lanes on part of the median strip of the Riverside Freeway, California 91. The willingness of the Riverside County Transportation Commission and the Orange County Transportation Authority to sign off on the plan offers a breakthrough for commuters caught in snarled rush-hour traffic throughout Southern California.

What makes the plan especially attractive is that the lanes, which will stretch 10 miles between the Riverside County line and the Costa Mesa Freeway in Anaheim, will be built on an existing right of way along a heavily traveled road. Moreover, pricing has been linked to commuting hours, a shrewd idea because people will save money on tolls if they use the road at off-peak times. And there will be an incentive to car-pool; car-poolers will be able to use public-financed high-occupancy-vehicle lanes on the Riverside County side, and then, if a vehicle has sufficient passengers, ride free on the new tollway lanes that continue into Orange County.

The two counties had been bickering over whether Orange County ought to provide free car-pool lanes instead of the toll lanes on its part of the freeway; some in Riverside County were unhappy because that county taxed itself for new car-pool lanes that also will benefit people from Orange County. The two sides are to be commended for looking beyond such narrow concerns; they compromised by exempting Riverside commuters in vehicles carrying three or more people.

That was a sensible solution, and it offered fresh evidence that careful negotiation can help solve regional transportation problems.