Orange County’s toll road agency has a new, two-pronged idea for reducing north-south traffic delays on Interstate 5 in South Orange County:

(1) Extend Los Patrones Parkway south from Cow Camp Road to Avenida La Pata.

(2) Add restricted-use carpool/toll lanes to I-5 between the 73 Toll Road and Basilone Road at San Onofre.

Taken together, these two proposals could provide about the same traffic relief for I-5 as extending the 241 through the middle of San Clemente to merge with I-5 near Avenida Pico, Transportation Corridor Agency directors were told Thursday, Feb. 8.

Mike Chesney, the TCA’s chief strategy officer, introduced the idea at a board meeting in Irvine. The idea joins seven other concepts being examined in a TCA study of transportation options. Officials said analysis of the eight options could be completed in late summer.

The seven other ideas include:

A 241 extension through San Clemente to I-5 at Avenida Pico

A 241 extension through San Clemente to I-5 at Shorecliffs Golf Course

A 241 extension to I-5 through San Juan Capistrano to I-5 near the Beach Cities curve

A 241 connection between Ladera Ranch and Rancho Mission Viejo to the 73 Toll Road near the border of Mission Viejo/San Juan Capistrano

Two options for adding lanes to I-5

An arterial highway connection of Antonio Parkway and Ortega Highway to Avery Parkway and the 73 Toll Road

The TCA’s decades-old effort to extend the 241 Toll Road south past Oso Parkway has been stuck since 2008 when the Coastal Commission denied a proposed 16-mile extension that would have run through uninhabited hills behind San Clemente to I-5 at Basilone Road near Trestles Beach.

Environmental groups that had united in a “Save Trestles” campaign defeated it and challenged TCA’s subsequent efforts to extend the 241 incrementally south from Oso.

In 2016, the TCA gave up on the route, abandoning it in a lawsuit settlement in which the environmental groups agreed to not oppose any 241 route outside a San Onofre protection zone.

Now the TCA is exploring elsewhere, and Rancho Mission Viejo is constructing a highway, Los Patrones Parkway, along the former 241 route from Oso Parkway south to Cow Camp Road, near Ortega Highway. Los Patrones is being built as a free public road to serve the ranch development.

The TCA’s new idea would extend Los Patrones past Ortega Highway as a four-lane road merging into La Pata.

Several TCA board members hailed the idea.

“It’s certainly is very promising to me for San Juan, Ladera Ranch, a lot of these cities that are very fearful of this plan or many plans that we have on the table,” said Director Christina Shea from Irvine.

Director Brian Maryott from San Juan Capistrano said the route is flexible, still to be defined, and is noteworthy in that it could split the traffic relief into two projects. Director Lisa Bartlett said that funding it could be complicated, suggesting it be separate projects.

Director Kathy Ward from San Clemente said she wants to look at Los Patrones extension to La Pata as a free road – not a toll road. She said adding two toll lanes to I-5 in addition to carpool lanes that the Orange County Transportation Authority is looking at adding from Avenida Pico to the San Diego County line would be excessive, requiring a taking of property through the middle of San Clemente.

The TCA said that the extension of Los Patrones Parkway would create a feeder route to the 241, “similar to how Jamboree Road functions with SR-261.”

Cow Camp Road is not an efficient terminus for Los Patrones, the TCA said, and extending Los Patrones south would provide better relief for Antonio Parkway and Ortega Highway.

Contacted for comment, Rancho Mission Viejo’s senior vice-president Dan Kelly said in a statement, “We are learning about this new proposal along with everyone else and don’t have enough information to take a formal position at this time.”

Analysis of the eight ideas, when complete, could lead to the TCA board selecting a project to pursue, together with an environmental analysis.