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.
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