Some residents welcome restriping
SUNSET PARK Everyone seems to have an opinion about the effects of transforming Ocean Park Boulevard from what was once called a two-lane highway into a one-lane corridor, the issue that has some commuters reeling and others praising city planners for making the change.
It was one month ago that city crews restriped an accident-prone strip of Ocean Park from Lincoln to Cloverfield boulevards, condensing the street into one west and eastbound lane but creating a left-turn option and bike lane as a result.
The change had many commuters, including business owners and neighborhood residents, criticizing City Hall for a plan they believed would increase gridlock and create headaches for drivers who travel along the busy stretch of asphalt during rush hour.
Part of the reason why city planners decided to restripe the street was to increase safety for pedestrians that walk across the many unsignalized crosswalks along the boulevard — intersections that have seen numerous pedestrian and automobile-related casualties and fatalities in the past few years.
“The intent was to improve traffic safety and pedestrian safety by slowing down people who were speeding and making it easier to make a decision at the intersections and also to provide more parking availability,” Transportation Planning Manager Lucy Dyke said last month.
A month later, some commuters who have had time to get used to the changes say they’ve been pleasantly surprised.
“I expected that it was going to make traffic that much more worse because traffic is bad enough on Ocean Park Boulevard,” said commuter Laurie Charchut, a 10-year resident of Sunset Park. “Logically, it seemed if you restricted two lanes to one, it would make it back up (traffic) even further.”
“For whatever reason, in this little time that has passed, that doesn’t seemed to have happened,” she added.
Others once in favor, now say they wish city planners never touched the street.
“I was in favor of restriping, now I think it’s a terrible idea,” Chris Downey, said in an e-mail. “They should go back to the way it was.”
The new one-lane roadway is also meant to avoid a specific type of accident that occurs when an impatient motorist — stuck behind a car that is stopped for a pedestrian — jumps into the second lane and possibly strikes the pedestrian in the crosswalk, Dyke explained last month.
For some residents, who have witnessed one near-pedestrian fatality after another, the restriping is a welcome change, even if it means added congestion.
“It will probably stop the accidents,” said Tony Munoz, a Sunset Park resident who also owns the Varieties International ballroom dance studio at the corner of 17th Street and Ocean Park Boulevard. “But for traffic, it’s made it worse.”
Munoz and his wife, Nancy, have run the dance studio in a small strip mall for more than 30 years and have both come close to being hit by cars on several occasions during those three decades. Whereas it used to take the couple about seven minutes to drive home after work, the commute time has been doubled because of the added congestion from the restriped lanes, Tony Munoz said.
It occasionally takes Munoz two light cycles just to make a left turn from 17th Street onto Ocean Park, he said.
“Traffic has come down to a crawl,”he said. The slowed-down traffic has made crossing the street a much less fearful activity for Julie Vo, who owns Seventh Muse, a gift store near 18th and Ocean Park.
“I feel safer because I only need to watch for one set of cars instead of two,” Vo said. “I would like to see traffic slow down even more.”
While a month with the new configuration has seemed to ease the nerves of some commuters, others who were originally in opposition have not strayed from their stance.
“I thought the restriping idea was bad, but I did not realize how horrible an idea it was until it was done,” Sunset Park resident Karrie Nordberg said in an e-mail. “Going eastbound, the traffic is often backed up to Fourth Street. It’s ridiculous.”
Restriping could have the unintended consequence of encouraging motorists to take neighborhood streets to Ocean Park Boulevard in order to escape the congestion on Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, Vladimir Manuel, a Mar Vista resident, speculated.
Manuel, who works in Santa Monica, was eating lunch at a cafe near John Adams Middle School on Monday afternoon with his friend Adrian Carpusor, both debating benefits and ill-effects of the new one-lane street before them.
“You could see more traffic in the neighborhood, more on the side streets,” Manuel said. “Traffic always adapts.”
Carpusor added that one of the most pleasant changes is the addition of a left turn lane. Before, drivers would get caught behind a motorist attempting to make a left turn, causing a back up of cars behind them.
“If you lived in the area and needed to make a left turn, it was horrible,” Carpusor said.
The restriping is on a six-month trial basis. City transportation planners with City Hall plan to study the impact on traffic to determine whether it’s an improvement.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 15, 2008. Read the original PDF.