Toll Road Birthday: Gift-Bearing Officials Take Over Booths

How do you say Happy Birthday to a road? Well, when the highway in question is a toll road, you might start by giving away a few dozen free trips.

One year and more than 18 million car trips later, Eastern Toll Road board members donned orange Caltrans work vests Monday morning and took to the tollbooths, greeting cash customers during the morning commute.

As the cars pulled up to the tall, glass-and-metallic booths, Susan Withrow, a Mission Viejo councilwoman and chairwoman of the Foothill/Eastern tollway board, introduced herself to the customers.

“It’s our birthday today,” she told them, handing over a free-ride pass and, on occasion, an application for an electronic toll transponder, which would have enabled the driver to bypass the booths entirely.

Some people chatted and others needed to be on their way. After all, one of the system’s mottoes is “Because Life’s Too Short.”

The event marked the first anniversary of the $1.8-billion, 24-mile road that connects the bedroom communities of the Inland Empire with Orange County’s job centers. It has been a busy year for the road, which was refinanced in July to take advantage of better interest rates and provide a bigger cushion for repaying the debt. The new bond sale extended the repayment date of the bonds by five years--pushing back to 2035 the conversion of the pay road into a freeway.

For county Supervisor Todd Spitzer, the unconventional party was an opportunity to meet the clientele of the Transportation Corridor Agencies. And since it was held at Tomato Springs toll plaza in his district, it was also a chance for the talkative politician to press the flesh.

True to form, Spitzer said he had a lot to ask: Where are you from? Where are you driving to? How often do you take the toll roads?

“I asked them how it’s improved their commute and talked about the cost,” Spitzer said. “Some people said it’s absolutely worth it. Some people said it’s on the expensive side.”

Toll road officials have been looking for ways to get more of their regular customers to use the electronic devices, which allow drivers to take all 51 miles of county toll road without ever slowing down to pay a toll. Research by the toll road agencies has found that some people say they enjoy talking to the toll attendants every day and won’t trade that for a faster commute.

“I think, after talking to me, some of them might make the switch,” Spitzer said with a laugh. “I probably asked a few more questions than they are used to.”