Environuts on California Coastal Commission vote to block Foothill South TR completion

Radicals with an anti-car/anti-road/anti-wealth agenda on the California Coastal Commission voted 8 to 2 last night against the Orange County TCA toll authority's application for approval for the CA241 Foothill South tollroad extension which will link the stub end of the tollroad in Rancho Santa Margarita with the I-5 in San Clemente.

The vote followed about ten hours of speakers of many viewpoints. But among the many speakers - we listened on an audio link - elected official after elected official from the cities around argued in favor of the tollroad.

Radical agenda of commissioners

When it came time for the Commissioners to speak at 9:30pm local time it was clear they were little concerned about the coast but animated by a radical political agenda.

One Commissioner went on at length about how little traffic traveled the 73 Toll Road (it does 85k transactions a day - TRnews) while I-405 was crowded. He denounced the tollroad as a "private road" - TCA is a totally public toll authority, not-for-profit, created by the state of California with a board of directors comprised entirely of local government officials.

A "private tollroad"

"A private road being pushed through a public park," he said. Among these radicals to call something private is perhaps not even an attempt at a description of its ownership or control but, like fascist, just a loose term of disparagement.

The tollroad would not be used by ordinary people, he said, only by the wealthy, by an elite.

"They can build it, but will the traffic come," is a paraphrase of the challenge made by the coastal commissioner to the traffic and revenue studies of the TCA.

Did they test the underpass for the pocket mouse with scientific studies?

Another coastal commissioner woman rambled on at length about how the TCA had not produced scientifically valid studies that a 'pocket mouse' would choose to use wildlife underpasses under the tollroad and they might become roadkill.

Though, she said, you would never be able to see the roadkill because the mice are so tiny.

It is the preservation of such tiny critters on which the mobility of Southern California depends under these people.

A third coastal commissioner said she had berated Tom Magro, CEO of the toll authority and a former CEO of the BART train system in San Francisco saying he should be bringing Orange County a new environmentally sensitive rail system, not than a road.

You should be getting people out of their cars, not building roads

Public agencies should be "getting people out of cars" not building roads, the toll authority was lectured from the Coastal Commission bench.

The tollroad was characterized by the same commissioner as "something from the 1950s, not from now, when we know how endangered our planet is."

The most moderate commissioners said that alternatives had not been adequately studied even though the project has gone right through two sets of NEPA environmental permitting processes over ten years and been accepted as the best alternative by FHWA, Caltrans, EPA, National Fish and Wildlife, and California EPA.

The fight for mobility goes on

There would seem to be solid legal grounds for a court challenge to the vote since the Coastal Commission does not have jurisdiction to decide whether people should be gotten out of their cars, whether rail is environmentally superior to road, whether NEPA processes have been followed, or whether the traffic and revenue projections are valid.

All but a few hundred yards of the southern end of the tollroad extension near I-5 lie outside the coastal zone over which the Commission has jurisdiction. If the Coastal Commission had been around then I-5 would have been blocked.

Tollroad officials said afterwards they will be enlisting the support of the US Government.

The contested segment of the tollroad is to be built on US Government (Marine Corps) land that is on a soon-to-expire lease to the California parks agency.

In addition the Coastal Commission appears to be trying to assert itself over the US NEPA environmental perrmiting process.

Lance MacLean, chairman of the Foothill Eastern TCA was quoted in the Los Angeles Times: '"It's not over yet. We still believe firmly that our project as proposed provides the best traffic relief in the most environmentally sound way."

Tom Magro TCA CEO: "The area is in gridlock most of the time. The fact that Southern California needs an alternative to the I-5 in this area has been known for decades."

BACKGROUND: The Foothill South is the final segment of the now thriving Foothill Eastern Toll Road (comprising CA133, CA241, CA261) the first segment of which opened in 1993. Last year it brought in $115m and toll revenue. the Foothill Eastern does 180k toll transactions per day ("no traffic" according to a Coastal Commissioner.)

That's 66 million trips a year - a large "elite" there producing "no traffic" to use the classwar fantasy rhetoric of one of the Coastal Commissioners.

The Extension is designed to connect people in San Clemente and San Diego more directly to communities and jobs in eastern parts of Orange County and to open up a new route to Riverside County. Of 6 lanes it would be 26km (16 miles) long and is estimated to cost about $900m.

TCA Foothill South website: http://www.ftcsouth.com/home/home.htm

also: http://www.relievetraffic.org/foothillsouth.htm

map: http://www.ftcsouth.com/home/pdf/TCA_GreenMeansGo_Map_1MB.pdf

see previous TOLLROADSnews report: http://tollroadsnews.com/node/3383

TOLLROADSnews 2008-02-07