LA Freeways loom larger than freeways in future plans

LA

Tollways loom larger than freeways in future plans

Tollways are bigger than freeways in LA planning accoding to the latest draft regional plan from the local association of governments (SCAG). On top of the planned $8.2b of truck pikes in the SCAG plan (see p1) are $2.8b of toll roads and $594m of HOT lanes. By comparison with this total of $11.6b of toll projects only $3.9b of free roads ($2.2b of fwy projects and $1.7b HOV) are in the SCAG plan. $11.6b vs $3.9b! LA home of the freeway has gone toll.

LA like other heavily builtup areas seems unlikely to get many new freeways. The more a city needs new transport capacity because of high density and heavy traffic the more expensive it is to build and the more difficult it is to gain political support for that extra capacity. That paradox can only be broken once you abandon the paradigm of looking to tax financing alone for the funding, and look to tolls. Because the worse the congestion and the heavier the traffic, the more you are likely to be able to raise large toll revenues and the easier it is to fund highway improvements via tolling.

To the extent LA doesn’t toll then its freeways will strangle it, and it will steadily lose business and people to better serviced areas inland like AZ, CO, NV, NM, UT and to Texas. The southern LA area (Orange Co, and also San Bernardino and Riverside — c40% of the LA region) have grasped that fact. Orange Co has the nation’s largest turnpike construction under way — the Eastern Corridor (SR-241, 261, 133), and extensions to the Foothill (SR-241). Until some wild weather hit early December the Eastern pike was way ahead of schedule. But 7” of rain one day produced erosion gullies several feet wide and deep all along its many huge embankments, when I visited. Great gusts of wild wind coming out of the snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains were tearing doors and windows off the toll booths on the mainline plaza of the San Joaquin Hills toll road (SR-73) and the booths themselves (designed like separate yacht sails, with no protective plaza canopy) were creaking back and forth. On quieter days it is a beautiful road to ride providing great new vistas of the lovely hills but it is too steep to attract heavy truck traffic. The south County area is developing again after a prolonged recession and the SJH toll road will probably continue to have good traffic growth.

A big thing going for the Orange Co toll roads — not so far factored into any of their traffic projections — is the likely development of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine as the second major civil airport for the Los Angeles area. Being abandoned as part of the defense build-down El Toro has several times the area of the tight John Waybe Airport — indeed more land than Los Angeles Intenational Airport (LAX) — and magnificent highway connections.

The other big project needed in Orange Co is the southward extension of SR-57, for which a URS Greiner-Perot Group consortium has a BTO franchise from the state. The Perot Group was dragging its feet and is now out of the venture which is being reorganized by URS Greiner. Local experts say the pike looks a good project if it can be designed economically enough, because parallel SR-55 is presently a horrible bottleneck being the only coast-bound route south of I-5. . The whole 14km of 57-S has to be built as repetitive elevated structure over the Santa Ana River flood channel, a dreary stretch of wide concrete that is usually dry but runs such a massive torrent on occasions that the whole river valley is the subject of a large flood control scheme involving a string of retention basins.

New toll roads: The $2.8b of toll roads in the SCAG regional plan are mostly not news to the well-informed readers here — TCA’s pikes in Orange Co and SR-71 Corona tollway in Riverside Co (TRnl#7 Sep96 p1). But the plan lists two new potential toll projects nearby which have only surfaced in the past weeks.

(1) SR-241 Northern Transp Corridor, a $302m connector between Orange and San Bernardino Cos. This road is envisaged as a continuation northward of the under-construction Eastern Corridor pike taking off into the Chino Hills from SR-91 then curling eastward to hook into the recently constructed SR-71 fwy at its interchange with SR-83. The Chino Hills section goes through state park so would probably have to be tunnel.

For the moment this is nothing more than a line on the map of the LA regional plan. Kim Shultz of the San Bernardino assoc of governments (SANBAG) told us his sense is that the northern link will be needed. He sasy a huge slab of dairy country south of the city of Ontario is likely to be turned over to residential and commercial use shortly with the potential to add 100,0000 population to the county — just one project. Of the Northern Corridor he says real studies are only just beginning. Called locally the Four Corners Project (4 counties meet here) Orange Co Transp Authority is the lead agency in getting traffic modelling under way for this highway link. Shultz says the San Bernardino officials have adopted the position that all future major highways will be “on a user fee basis” — which means tolls. So his guess is that the Northern Corridor will shape up as a toll road.

(2) A South Pass Corridor, $1.2b linking Orange and Riverside Cos. R’side population is forcast to go from the present 1.2m to 2.3m and its employment from 0.3m to 0.8m now to 2020.

The real jobs for R’side are in Orange Co — 1.3m jobs now and 2.1m in 2020, the plan says. San Bernardino Co also enters the mix with pop forecast to rise from 1.6m now to 2.8m. San B is job-short too, so those tidal waves of SanB and R’side commuters going into Orange Co each am and returning each pm need new ways to get through the Chino Hills and the Santa Ana Mountains than the 12-lane SR-91.

The SCAG map shows this South Pass Corridor project as parallel to SR-91 and just 4 to 5km south of it, right on the edge of the Cleveland National Forest and not far down the slope from Sierra Peak. But planner David Stein told us this location for the South Pass Corridor is purely nominal. Indeed 91-Express might sue, claiming breach of a state guarantee of “no new capacity” along its route if the new Southern Pass were to proceed so close to its concession. Quite likely a more southerly South Pass would make more sense — perhaps something more directly between El Cerrito and the new El Toro airport, largely tunnel because of both the height and the enviro sensitivity of the Santa Ana mountains it would traverse (see More Southerly South Pass — MSSP). When the general idea for a South Pass surfaced locally a few weeks back there was strong opposition expressed to the idea in Orange Co, but Riverside Co Transp Commission head Jack Reagan says he wants more talks to discuss the project.

Reagan says the SR-71 toll road is on the shelf for the moment. He wanted to take the project forward but his commissioners rejected the proposal late last year: “NIMBY sentiment knocked it over but my guess is that it will be back in a few years.” He called it a Lazarus project — destined to rise again.

New freeways: The new SCAG regional plan provides for a variety of small upgrades and only two major (>$200m) projects:

• I-710’s Missing Gap in Passadena (confusingly called SR-710 now that there is fed$s), a 7km section never built and listed as a $695m. This is Alhambra, Monterey Hills, South Pasadena, home to UCLA and Caltech, a collection of museums, gorgeous settled professional and residential areas full of articulate people, who can wage an effective fight against an offensive freeway. They enjoy a parkway-like I-110 an compact 2x2-laner which winds prettily along a treed stream into downtown LA. This is a historic road in part because it was the western end of the famous intercontinental Highway 66, but also because it was built as the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the first motorway standard road in California, opening in 1940 (See David Brodsly’s brilliant book “LA Freeway,” UC Press.) The I-710 Missing Link will have to be heavily underground if it is ever to be accepted.

• The only other untolled proposed megaproject is reconstruction of I-405 for 33km between I-105 near LA Airport and US-101 north over the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley.

Trouble is overall area mwy lane capacity is only due to increase from 12,445 in 1994 to 13,480 lane-km in 2020, an increase of 11% during a period when overall population and traffic are due to grow 43%. Modelling suggests “25% (of the LA ntwork) will be extremely congested with speeds of 10 to 16 mph” by 2020. 70% of average driver miles will be done in stop-&-go conditions with average speeds declining from 33mph to 23mph, which the plan describes candidly as a system “overwhelmed.”

The plan is realistic about transit noting that it has played a small and steadily diminishing role in the region (less than 5% of trips now). Many rail and bus services are “low performance” and there is little likelihood of this being reversed. The report suggests many bus services might better be replaced by “smart shuttles” — demand-responsive vans and jitneys. After a number of fiascos some short underground rail lines built at great expense are being terminated and there are suggestions that the tunnels be converted to highway use.

ITS: An interesting sidelight is that SCAG has radically reduced its assumptions about what Intelligent Transp Systems (ITS) has to offer. In its 1994 study it assumed ‘smart’ transport technology could boost capacity of fwys 10%. It now says that “based on real world data” the number is 2.5%. SCAG has also factored down its estimates for ITS benefits on arterials.

HOV/HOT: $1.7b of HOV lanes and HOV-to-HOV connectors are listed which should increase HOV facilities from 480 lane-km to 1980 lane-km. Two major new HOT (High Occupancy vehicle/Toll others) projects are listed:

(1) SR-14 the Antelope Valley Fwy in far northern LA Co from the beginning of the Fwy at I-5 near Santa Clarita to Av L in Palmdale: 54km, cost $364m. This project should add 2x2 lanes to the existing 2x2 and 2x3 lanes. The new lanes might work better as straight toll lanes according to a SCAG official rather than being HOT, but this is officially a HOT project..

(2) I-15 in Riverview Co from Calejo Rd and the planned interchange of the end of the Corona Toll Rd (SR-71-S) south past Lake Elsinore to the mmerge with I/SR-215 at Temecula: 45km, estd cost $230m.

Jack Reagan of Riverside Co Transp Com says he has a higher priority HOT project than I-15:

(3) SR-91 East - 15km from the Orange Co line where 91-X ends east to I-15, estd cost $180m. The Calif Private Transp Co, operator of 91-X, has a first right of refusal from the state to undertake this project. Reagan says he is hoping to pull together $0.5m for feasibility studies. He thinks a first stage might be a “Zipper” — a moveable barrier to create a pair of reversible HOT lanes — but the studies would examine various alternatives to enhance capacity.

REACH: There may be opportunities for LA’s many existing and planned HOV lanes to be converted to HOT or made pure toll lanes. Support for toll buy-in (HOT) and tolling has grown among professionals and opinion-leaders in the LA area (though there is formidable opposition as well.) An impressive consensus building exercise on transp policy in the LA area called REACH (Reduce Emissions And Congestion on Highways) conducted by SCAG and involving all major political interests and groups over several years ended up endorsing HOT lanes as the single most practical way forward toward getting the support needed for broader road pricing measures. (Contact Deborah Redman REACH/SCAG 213 236 1928, Kim Shultz SANBAG 909 884 8276, Jack Reagan, Riverside Co Transp Com 909 787 7141)