California State Route 241 - Future

Future

Foothill-South was planned as the last segment of the road, and the final piece in Orange County's planned 67-mile (108 km) network of public toll roads. It has been the subject of regional planning efforts for the more than 20 years.

The extension would provide an alternate route to Interstate 5 for those traveling from Riverside, Corona and southeast Orange County to points southward as well as those traveling from North San Diego County northward. Proponents of the project, including a coalition of chambers of commerce, argue it would provide greater access for communities such as Foothill Ranch, Rancho Santa Margarita, Las Flores, Coto de Caza, Wagon Wheel and the future Rancho Mission Viejo. The TCA Board of Directors, local elected officials who represent the areas adjacent to the toll road routes, certified the project's Environmental Impact Report in 2006.

The route was selected by a collaborative group that included the Federal Highway Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Fish & Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers and Caltrans.

The route would extend the toll road to connect to Interstate 5 at the San Diego County line near San Onofre, where the TCA projects traffic to increase 60 percent by 2025. The final four miles (6 km) of the roadway would be located on Camp Pendleton Marine Base. The road would go through a section of the San Onofre State Park, which is leased from the United States Marine Corps. The Marine Corps reserved the right to grant easements for rights of way when the lease with the California Department of Parks and Recreation was signed in 1971.

The TCA estimates that by 2025, Foothill-South would carry 58,000 vehicles per day. This would represent about 13% of the estimated 460,000 cars per day on the I-5 by that time.

On February 6, 2008, the California Coastal Commission voted 8-2 to reject a 16-mile (26 km) southern segment of the 241, Foothill-South, which was planned for the Foothill Toll Road. The TCA appealed the Coastal Commission's decision to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. On December 18, 2008, the Department of Commerce announced that it would uphold the California Coastal Commission’s ruling that found the TCA’s proposed extension of the 241 Toll Road inconsistent with the California Coastal Act. In a release issued by the Department of Commerce, the DOC noted that at least one reasonable alternative to the project existed, and that the project was not necessary in the interest of national security.

Read more about this topic:  California State Route 241

Famous quotes containing the word future:

    I want the necessity of supplying my own wants. All this costly culture of yours is not necessary. Greatness does not need it. Yonder peasant, who sits neglected, carries a whole revolution of man and nature in his head, which shall be a sacred history to some future ages.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. M The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.
    Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)

    The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.
    Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)