The first toll lanes within the California Department of Transportation’s Freeway System – a span extending 10 miles on the I-10 Freeway from the county line at the Pomona/Montclair divide to the convergence of Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario and Fontana near Rancho Cucamonga’s border with Fontana – will open at the end of the month.
As a consequence, incumbent San Bernardino County politicians who must stand for reelection in November are hoping a significant portion of their constituents won’t take it out on them when the region’s residents, upon realizing the hassle, inconvenience, delays and outright aggravation they have been putting up with for the last two-and-a-half years will not result in four new free travel lanes but require that they pay money to use a key piece of infrastructure most believe they have already paid for, go to the polls in November.
According to the California Department of Transportation, known by its acronym Caltrans, and the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency, which goes by SBCTA, the two lanes going west and the two lanes going east will become operational on August 29.
Transportation officials confidently say the lanes, which are to become part of California’s FasTrak system which allow on-line, electronic or smart phone payments, will facilitate the flow of eastbound and westbound traffic by reducing congestion and alleviating traffic jams during the morning and late afternoon/early evening rush hours.
Experienced commuters are not so sure..
Statistics show that far fewer than 15 percent of travelers in California are willing to pay toll fees. Thus, the reduction of gridlock on the freeway from the advent of the lanes this summer is very likely to be far less impactful than some perceive or hope.
While some residents have long recognized that the lanes being constructed are to be ones that motorists must pay to use, many do not. The recent erection of overhead markers for the lanes has alerted some travelers. Nevertheless, commuters for more than three years have put up with delays and substantial inconvenience on the span of the freeway from Montclair all the way through Upland and Ontario to the Interstate 15, doing so graciously out of the belief that two more lanes along that span going east and two lanes going west will greatly alleviate congestion on the major highway.
With the November election looming, there is a possibility that those incumbents up for reelection will be scapegoated by their constituents for what many consider to be the specter of double, triple, indeed quadruple taxation.
The 10 Freeway was created during the Eisenhower Administration, predating the births of more than half of those who now use it. Its right-of-way was attained and it was constructed largely with the use of National Highway Funds.
In California, motorists pay a whopping 51.1 cents per gallon in gasoline tax, the highest in the nation.
In 1989, the voters of San Bernardino County passed Measure I, a half-cent countywide sales tax override, the proceeds from which are intended to pay for road and street improvements. The Measure I taxation regime was extended until 2040 in a countywide vote in 2004. Measure I money was administered through what was then the San Bernardino Association of Governments, a regional joint powers planning authority known by its acronym SanBAG, and later SBCTA, which were and are headed by a 29-member governing board, consisting of a council member or mayor from each of San Bernardino County’s 22 cities and two incorporated towns and all five members of the county board of supervisors.
On July 12, 2017, the SANBAG/SBCTA governing board, led by then-Chairman Alan Wapner, a city councilman representing Ontario, guided the board through a discussion and action to approve the toll lane project. Several of the citizens present spoke in opposition to the toll lane option for improving the freeway, some quite vociferously, a few of whom grew argumentative, while others pleaded with the board not to create the toll lanes. Their entreaties were in vain.
Thus, SBCTA’s arrangement with a third party which will collect the tolls to pay for the four additional lanes over the next 45-to-60 years constitutes quadruple taxation, critics of SBCTA maintain, since the use of federal money to acquire the right-of-way and build the freeway which was augmented by gasoline tax and the Measure I funding means the toll lanes have already been paid for.
When county residents objected to this taxation compounded three additional times, Wapner, as the chairman of SBCTA, claimed that “almost none” of the Measure I funding was being used for the construction of the toll lanes. “Almost none,” some noted, is alternate phraseology for “some.”
Sixteen of the SBCTA members present on July 12, 2017 supported the $963 million toll lane project: Wapner, Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, Rancho Cucamonga Mayor Lloyd Dennis Michael, Montclair Mayor Paul Eaton, Needles Mayor Edward Paget, Grand Terrace Mayor Darcy McNaboe, Apple Valley Town Councilman Curt Emick, Colton Councilman/now Mayor Frank Navarro, San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis, Redlands Councilman Jon Harrison, Upland Mayor Debbie Stone, Yucaipa Councilman David Avila, First District County Supervisor Robert Lovingood, Highland Councilman Larry McCallon and Yucca Valley Town Councilman Rick Denison.
Both Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa and then-Fifth District Supervisor Josie Gonzales voted against establishing the toll lanes.
Then-Adelanto Mayor Rich Kerr, then-Barstow Mayor Julie McIntyre, then-Big Bear Lake Mayor Bill Jahn, then-Chino Hills Councilman Ed Graham, then-Hesperia Councilman Bill Holland, then-Loma Linda Mayor/now-Councilman Rhodes Rigsby, Rialto Mayor Deborah Robertson, Twentynine Palms Councilman Joel Klink, then-Victorville Councilman Jim Kennedy, San Bernardino County Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford and San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman were not present.
Eaton is deceased. McNaboe was voted out of office in 2022 as were Stone and McIntyre in 2020 and both Davis and Kerr in 2018. Paget, Harrison, Avila, Lovingood, Jahn, Graham, Holland and Kennedy have left office by choice and Rutherford was termed out.
Klink, due to stand for reelection this year, opted not to do so.
Robertson is competing for reelection this year.
Wapner, Warren, Navarro and Dennison were reelected in 2022 and Michael faced no opposition.
That the widening of the freeway from the San Bernardino County/Los Angeles County all the way into Rancho Cucamonga going on over the last four years is to accommodate not freeway lanes but toll lanes has been a secret hidden in plain sight. SBCTA did not go out of its way to publicize the coming toll road, but has not actively sought to hide it either. Rather than hide the project, it has pursued a strategy of obscuring it, using terms like “increased capacity,” “express,” “enhanced capacity,” “HOV,” and “augmented high occupancy vehicle” in reference to it. Only upon being pressed have SBCTA officials expounded on the concept, saying that the freeway at that point in both directions already has a single HOV (i.e. high occupancy vehicle) or carpool lane. That lane and another lane to be added in each direction will remain as a HOV or carpool lane, with the proviso that instead of carrying two passengers to qualify as a high occupancy vehicle, the car must carry three or more passengers. Those in cars with fewer than three passengers wishing to travel in the two inner lanes will have the option, transportation officials say, of purchasing, by means of a toll, the privilege of utilizing those lanes in the future.
Drivers will pay an amount indicated on digital signs near the lane entrances, depending on how crowded the freeway is at that time.
Of issue is if this year’s voters, under the impression that the current crop of officeholders are the political architects of the toll lanes, whether they supported constructing the toll lanes or not, will vote to replace them in November.