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# Choking traffic will be city’s ruin
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/choking-traffic-will-be-citys-ruin-editor/
- Published: 2007-12-27T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T04:37:29.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Downtown, #archive-import

*By Jan Zambas*

The city of Santa Monica supplied yet another gift to it’s residents and visitors, just in time for Christmas — the squeezing down of the East/West bound lanes of Ocean Park Boulevard. Much like the plaque in an arteriosclerotic condition, which in the body leads to a heart attack, the narrowing of lanes is merrily collapsing the flow of traffic. One “calming” lane now yields a continuous day-long freight train-like row of cars. This scene is only altered during rush hours, when said traffic totally relaxes and backs up for blocks; or when a bus stops, acting as a kindly break for the cars behind it; or when a confused or errant driver fails to use the empty wasteland center lane to make it’s turn, causing a jovial slamming on of breaks behind it.

Yes, Santa Monica is indeed a city of many stances. In psychological circles, one might even call it schizophrenic. In it’s own commercial contracts and interests, it runs homegrown family businesses/vendors financially out of town to make way for corporate businesses and a more densely developed central district. City Hall’s administratively liberal policies and developer “deals,” in turn, serves to increase the glut of tourists, non-residents and new high-priced rentals spewing from what now resembles unrestrained urban sprawl.

One nasty little byproduct, though, of too many people for too small of an area, is how to contend with an increase of motor vehicles, their impact on neighborhoods, and how to get them in, parked, and then out of this area in a no-muss-no-fuss fashion. One idea was the fast tract bus lane in our civic center, making downtown more of a mini New York in feeling and fumes. Another was to decorate our roads with lumpy speed bumps, more traffic signs, preferential parking zones blanketing the entire city, augmented by an increase of lucrative parking meters. Then there is the imaginative narrowing and, oftentimes, nonfunctioning reconfiguration of roadways, more commonly called “traffic calming” measures.

It is the people of Santa Monica, however, who grumble but courteously have adapted to over 30 years of topographical, cultural and social changes — from the erosion of movement throughout this city to the radical alteration of what once used to be a small, closely knit beach community. But, more is yet to come. Even though streets are clogged and roadways are ironically being narrowed, the powers that be have ideas ripe with how to add still more people to the metropolitan mix; by going up and strangling our ocean views and sea air.

I fervently hope the New Year will usher in more sanity and temperance towards the creation of public policy. Perhaps, this can only be accomplished at the behest of an involved citizenry — a consortium of people who treasure quality of life over the interests of big business, flights of traffic control fancy, or the intellectual social engineering conducted by those elected to oversee the health and well-being of our city. One such prudent reconsideration would be the restoration of Ocean Park Boulevard to its original design, whereby it can once again be a viable roadway of getting from here to there, with relative ease and calm. However, much more remains to be done.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 27, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/122707.pdf?ref=smdp.com)