Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Jack Eidt writes on the dangers of proposing mixed use development far from urban amenities and alternative transportation. The real estate industry in Orange County, California and beyond, has consistently violated engineering and planning wisdom by building in floodplains, paving over precious open space land and losing opportunities to preserve wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities amid the suburban sprawl at the edge of the wilderness.
Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) CEO Neil Peterson, who was placed on leave last month, has offered to resign in exchange for receiving a hefty out-the-door payment. This from an agency suffering low toll revenues and misguided attempts to extend their roads against environmental rules and opposition.
Caltrans plans to widen the 91 Freeway [again], spending $1.3 Billion to improve commute speeds 1.5 miles per hour, while further destroying the only wildlife connection between the Santa Ana Mountains and the Puente-Chino Hills. Commuter trains, anyone?
When a pilot instructor and student emergency-landed a small plane in the perpetually-empty northbound lanes of the debt-ridden, failing-business-model 241 toll road in Orange County, California, he exclaimed: “What a waste of perfectly good asphalt.”
No matter where they’re stuck in OC’s sprawling road network: on I-5, the 405, Crown Valley Parkway, or in their own driveway — a magical toll road miles from their moribund vehicular situation will time-travel them up, to that heavenly place of commuter-bliss, where slowdowns never occur.
Orange County’s Toll Road Agency is pushing the first segment of a previously rejected road extension that will have significant and irreversible environmental and economic impacts. According to the Save San Onofre Coalition and the State Attorney General, the project had failed to undertake sufficient environmental studies. As a result, the Regional Water Board in San Diego decided to deny the project a waste discharge permit.
A movement to pave over San Onofre State Beach and Trestles with a toll-road-to-nowhere-for-nobody-but-developers was rejected by the California Coastal Commission and Federal Commerce Department in 2008. Yet, here again the State Water Boards will decide in May whether to grant a permit for the “Stupid Toll Road” to dump contaminated runoff into creeks and the ocean while keeping the dream alive of paving over Trestles.