By Joey Vermeulen Santa Monica
This letter is in reference to making Pico and Olympic boulevards into seven-lane one-way streets. (”One-way decisions,” page 1, April 2) What we need is a real solution not a misguided temporary “patch” to this serious problem. If this one-way street idea was adopted I’m certain the city would chose the option to allow for left turn lanes. As it is, this one-way street configuration would greatly increase the amount of cut-through traffic on the streets between Pico and Olympic. Not allowing left turns would require drivers who need to turn left, to make three right turns instead. This would further exacerbate the cut-through traffic problems, ruining the local neighborhoods. The traffic study shows that the proposed one-way street configuration, allowing left turns, would only increase capacity on these roads by 6 percent! This number is insignificant given the growing urban population. The state mandates greater density in Santa Monica. Can you imagine seven-lane one-way streets with synchronized traffic signals? Seven lanes in one direction is wider than any freeway. This would ruin the character of the Pico neighborhood that Santa Monica has recently worked so hard to improve. The $7 Million Pico streetscape would have to be torn out. Every major metropolitan city across the world had figured out that the solution to traffic congestion in large cities is a train/subway metro system.
Let’s address this growing issue with a real solution and fund the “Subway to the Sea”, not one-way streets.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 28, 2007. Read the original PDF.