Time To Abolish The Toll Road Agency (TCA)

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — The Transportation Corridor Agency (TCA aka The Toll Roads) has long outlived its usefulness and has in fact managed to spend about $6 billion over the last 20 years while also not building anything.

Top executives make between $200k-$400k+ per year, they are currently looking to hire a Chief External Affairs Officer at $200k for some reason, the position isn't necessary for their mandate.

The 73 was supposed to be free to drive years ago, but constant refinancing of the toll roads debt (similar to refinancing your house, it resets the clock) means these things will never be paid for, and the purpose seems to be to just keep all those guys and gals in their jobs. The recent expose in March 2019 by the Los Angeles Times really underscored the financial chicanery going on, I suggest you read these two articles here and here.

The purpose of the TCA ostensibly is to improve mobility in Orange County, just last week ground was broken on a 6.5 mile freeway expansion project between El Toro Rd. and the 73 that is supposed to be finished in 2025, this little nugget is expected to cost almost $600 million. Now keep all that in mind as you look at these stats of the off ramp figures from the I-5 freeway on an average day:

Bake Parkway - 72,000 vehicles
Lake Forest Dr. - 59,300 vehicles
El Toro Road - 54,000 vehicles

Total vehicles: 185,300

As the traffic goes east through Lake Forest, it drops off about half of those vehicles, but over 93,000 of them continue past the 241 toll road to homes in the Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills area of Lake Forest. By way of contrast, the 241 Toll Road has a given volume on any given day of about 36,000 vehicles in Lake Forest, which means most people would rather fight traffic on the I-5, and go home on busy streets than use the 241 Toll Road. This means the 241 and 133 Toll Roads have been a disaster in planning, but a money tree for TCA employees and board members.

If they were rally concerned about traffic the state should take over the 133 and 241 Toll Roads and opened them up for public use. This would take thousands of vehicles off the 405 and I-5 freeway at that location, which means the OTCA wouldn't have to build these large on and off ramps at the El Toro Rd. and I-5 location costing hundreds of millions of dollars. This would probably relieve some traffic in Irvine and there would be no need to build the 241 Toll Road to San Clemente.

Think about that for a minute.

This could be done today and start clearing up traffic immediately instead of suffering through another 5+ years of construction through a congested area. This is a topic that warrants a lot of ink, but there are a lot of players, a lot of shell games with money and donations and a lot of information to absorb. Here's an idea, how about they make the toll roads free for a month and see how it impacts the traffic on the surrounding freeways and arterial roads? This would give you some empirical data to work with for a change.

What we are looking at now is typical small picture thinking instead of looking at the entire ecosystem of what is happening and should happen.

There is a change.org petition floating around that you can also sign to express your views.

It's time to shut down the TCA and free up the tolls roads, that will solve a lot of mobility issues for the short to medium term.

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