This past week, Q-line asked: “What do you think will improve traffic in Santa Monica?”
Here are your responses: ✆ “The City Council and the powers that be have for the past several years done a good job lousing up traffic flow in our city by misguided innovations and overbuilding. Now they want citizens to help solve the mess they’ve created, which is now all but unsolvable. Bike lanes and bicycle riders are a menace in this heavy traffic. The roundabouts and angle parking can also be a nuisance. Next idea?” ✆ “Let traffic engineering do their job. Remove the speed bumps everywhere. Remove traffic-calming measures such as bulbouts and roundabouts. Bring back the one-way streets. Stop focusing on bus lanes or rapid buses. Think big. Bring in the Wilshire Red Line Subway all the way to the beach. Extend the Green Line Light Rail elevated down Lincoln and complete the Expo line.” ✆ “Nothing can be done about the traffic. The name ‘City of Santa Monica’ is a misnomer. The best way to describe the city of Santa Monica would be to refer to her as a reservoir of seven major east and west highways, including the 10 Freeway and two major north and south highways, plus a magnitude of side streets and alleyways that crisscross and that, for the most part, empty out onto Ocean Avenue. It would take a learned Asian accountant with an abacus to calculate the thousands of vehicles that travel on Pacific Coast Highway alone on a daily basis. Only the creator of the universe can do an accurate accounting of the rest of the city’s traffic at all hours of the day. All of the congestion renders down to the influx of new people into the bayside areas. In 1935, there were approximately 35,000 people residing between Palos Verdes and Malibu. With the exception of our freeway system, we have the same highways today we had then with only 35,000 people using the same roadways that carry millions of people on an annual basis. Angle parking will cause more rear-end collisions and is not a solution. With angle parking, it would create more parking spaces, but it takes up more roadway.” ✆ “The best way to improve traffic in Santa Monica is to fire the morons who are in charge of it. Get rid of all of these roundabouts and one-way streets and put normal traffic lights and normal streets like they used to have in the old days. We shouldn’t let all of these developers come in apartment after apartment because that brings more traffic. The only way to improve traffic is to get rid of these morons that allowed this to happen.” ✆ “If Santa Monica is to remain a livable city and not just an alternate freeway route, traffic flow has to be tempered with other concerns. The Santa Monica department of transportation is completely oblivious to pedestrian safety... The streets have to be shared with pedestrians.” ✆ “I drove a taxi in Santa Monica for almost 23 years. I know one thing, for sure, would be to turn Broadway back to one-way from Ocean Avenue to Lincoln. It would break up all the congestion around the mall and would let traffic flow more freely towards the freeway and would greatly reduce hazards.” ✆ “It seems to me that there is only one way to keep traffic contained, and that is to stop developing, stop bringing more people to Santa Monica, and stop packing more people into this small city. There aren’t big enough streets wide enough to carry traffic in and out. I think we put a freeze on all development and concentrate on how to deal with the traffic we have. Then, maybe we can at least listen to the impact it is having now. It is never going to go away in this overbuilt place.” ✆ “The fact that city officials are trying to tap the community for ideas on how to improve traffic in Santa Monica is probably one of the biggest jokes of the year. I mean, they are putting up all of these massive apartment complexes, which are going to put more and more people and more and more automobiles to each apartment in an already horrible situation. They are looking for Band- Aids when there are wounds.” ✆ “When you got a pile of crap that you can’t get rid of, all you can do is just shovel it from one place to another. That’s traffic.” ✆ “You need left-turn indicators on every busy section in this town and you need to be able to control the traffic flow at rush hour in the morning by having a computerized system that allows the light to facilitate that flow.” ✆ “Synchronize the signals all over the town for between 25 and 30 miles per hour. Currently, it’s impossible not to stop at every signal, and that is very annoying. Second, put a moratorium on all high-occupancy buildings in this area. There should be no more office buildings and huge apartment complexes and things of that nature. Next, limit replacement buildings to the number of units they are actually replacing... Another one that has been used in many cities successfully and should be used here, is to have one-way streets in downtown with good signage indicating the streets. We had them briefly and then someone complained. I thought they worked beautifully and there they went. Last but not least, the city should just knock off all of the traffic-calming endeavors. They do not work. It is anything but calm to resolve these things when it takes 30 minutes to get from my house, which is a mile and a half from downtown, to anything resembling parking. It’s ridiculous. If I had the feet for it, I would walk, and my feet will not do that.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 12, 2005. Read the original PDF.