EDITORIAL:Tunnel goes both ways

The Laguna Beach City Council took on the whole of Southern California when it voted April 17 to insist that no vehicular traffic be allowed through the Santa Ana Mountains if a tunnel is built.

The council is hoping to convince the Orange County Transportation Authority to limit tunnel conveyance to water and trains only.

Council members believe that allowing freeway traffic from Riverside County to cross under the mountains and into Orange County will worsen traffic congestion in Laguna Beach, especially in the summer.

The Santa Anas effectively shelter this part of South Orange County from the teeming Inland Empire, which is growing by leaps and bounds.

“Build it and they will come” is the promise of progress — and the dread of places like Laguna Beach that are strained to capacity from throngs of summer visitors.

Laguna Beach has the right idea to try to influence the process early on. Whether they will be successful is probably a long shot.

Transportation planners started in January to conduct test borings in the Santa Ana Mountains to determine the feasibility of an 11.5-mile tunnel through the Cleveland National Forest.

The tunnel would connect Interstate 15 in Corona to the Foothill-Eastern tollway in Irvine.

Such a route would make it easier for folks in South Orange County to get on the road to Las Vegas and parts east, so there would be a reciprocal benefit for locals.

And jobs-rich Orange County needs the workers who can’t afford to live here but could commute if the route was more direct. The local economy — especially in visitor-serving Laguna Beach — depends upon them.

Such a tunnel is a huge undertaking and would cost billions. A mountain tunnel would take years to plan and more years to build.

That cost — and the difficulties of digging through that mountain range — are probably Laguna’s best hope for staunching the flood of unwanted traffic that would certainly ensue from such a tunnel.