Tollway Agencies Create Board to Oversee Merger

The boards of Orange County’s two toll road agencies Thursday unanimously approved a new 21-member governing body that would oversee a probable merger, the first step in an effort to save the financially ailing San Joaquin Hills toll road.

If the merger is completed, the board would control all of the county’s tollways, replacing two governing bodies that now run the San Joaquin Hills and Foothill/Eastern toll roads.

The board would include representatives from the 18 cities and three county supervisorial districts through which the highways run.

The merger is necessary, officials say, to ensure that more than $1 billion in bonds sold to pay for the San Joaquin Hills toll road don’t go into default, as they are expected to do by 2012. The tollway, which runs from Newport Beach to San Juan Capistrano, has failed to meet traffic and revenue projections since opening in 1996.

Merging the toll roads would also help the Irvine-based Transportation Corridor Agencies, which administers the two, to successfully sell bonds for the proposed Foothill South tollway, which would stretch from Mission Viejo to south of San Clemente.

“This will make us a better security risk and the bonds that we would sell in the future would be at a better interest rate,” said Scott Diehl, chairman of the Foothill/Eastern corridor agency.

“We’re trying to be as efficient as we can be. Merging makes a lot of sense,” he said.

But the merger is contingent on the findings of a $1.84-million traffic and revenue study, which is expected to be completed early next year.