Former Newport councilman let his home district suffer

Gerry Ross

In the Dec. 13 story on former Newport Beach Councilman Dennis

O’Neil’s “Legacy of Service in Newport,” I was fascinated to read

that O’Neil actually considers the “bypass of the San Joaquin Hills

toll road” as among his greatest accomplishments in eight years on

the City Council.

The free and open Newport Coast Drive, originally designed to

mitigate traffic impacts from the Newport Coast development, was a

condition precedent placed by the county to the granting of the

development permit. It was feared that traffic along Coast Highway in

Corona del Mar would become impossibly congested once Newport Coast

was built out.

So where are we 10 years later? We are suffering from almost

complete gridlock every morning on Coast Highway in Corona del Mar

during rush hour, weekends and summer vacation. Interestingly, O’Neil

served as a director and Newport Beach’s representative to the

Transportation Corridor Agency when these critical changes involving

the road were taking place.

He knew that the realignment of Newport Coast Drive into its

present form would eliminate the free, high-speed route from the

coast to the present freeway onramp at MacArthur Boulevard just north

of Bison Avenue. And he should have considered that drivers would

resist paying a toll (now $1) simply to travel two miles within the

same city, from Newport Coast Drive to Bison Avenue. As a result,

many have returned to using Coast Highway and Corona Del Mar’s

residential secondary streets to get to the Corona del Mar Freeway.

Furthermore, the bypass road that O’Neil cherishes is hardly an

efficient alternative to the original road. The former unobstructed,

single roadway now contains 12 (yes, 12) signaled intersections along

its course. It can reasonably take as much as 15 minutes to travel

this two-mile bypass. Newport Coast residents who paid (but who were

not fully reimbursed) for the original road paid millions more from

their Special Assessment Tax District to help construct the bypass.

Finally, O’Neil’s logic appears to fail when he states that the

impacts from the Newport Coast development have somehow been

minimized or mitigated by the annexation. He is quoted as saying,

“That project was built in the county. If it stayed in the county,

those impacts were still going to be there. What we got by making it

part of Newport Beach is a share of the property taxes, which after

we provide services is a source of revenue of several million dollars

or more forever.”

Wait a minute. How does gaining access to our property tax dollars

mitigate the negative traffic impacts created by the Newport Coast

development? It doesn’t.

Once the 1,000-plus homes at Turtle Ridge and the adjacent

apartments are developed, even fewer motorists will want to use the

bypass road. Thus, any remaining benefit for Corona del Mar from the

construction of Newport Coast Drive will have been further reduced,

and the town will forever face significant traffic challenges. I

won’t go so far as to say that O’Neil failed his constituency when he

either idly or actively permitted these changes to occur, but perhaps

he could have more vigorously defended his home turf.

* GERRY ROSS is a Newport Coast resident.