By BILL
WHEN I HEAR THE CITY IS PROPOSING to enhance, upgrade or “improve” a street, I get antsy.
Call me distrustful, but I anticipate this means more curb extensions, islands, speed bumps and traffic jamming designed to further City Hall’s green, “discourage ‘em from driving” agenda.
I joined a couple of Pico neighborhood friends last Tuesday evening in Virginia Park to review the latest street beautification proposal for Cloverfield Boulevard and 20th Streets between Pico Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway.
The $3.5-million, 10-years-in-the-works project was identified as only beautification and landscaping without any traffic recon-figuration. Yet, when we looked at the presentation, one change was more than just cosmetic. One of the two northbound traffic lanes on 20th Street dead-ended into a planter containing six trees just before the intersection with Delaware Avenue. On the other side of Delaware, the missing lane magically reappeared.
“What is this” I asked Linda Daily from AHBE the landscape architectural firm hired by the city to design and consult on the project. Why merge two busy traffic lanes into a “single” lane — for a planter? She said there was no intent to interfere with traffic. But, there it was in black and white: A classic bottleneck.
There were other traffic issues, too. At the Cloverfield and Virginia Avenue intersection, curb bumpouts or “radii” extending into the intersection eliminated the curb/parking lane for turns. Daily claimed the radii didn’t interfere with Cloverfield traffic, they were contained within the curb/parking lanes.
The next morning, I called Spiros Lazaris, the city’s project manager and Civil Engineer overseeing the project under the auspices of the city’s Environmental and Public Works Department. Lazaris assured me that the offending planter on the presentation had been relocated back to the sidewalk leaving the two northbound 20th Street traffic lanes intact. He said they also reduced the extended curb radii at the Virginia and Cloverfield intersection to ease turns and traffic movement.
My friends and I wondered whether these traffic alterations would be in the finished project if we hadn’t spotted them in the public presentation.
Ellen Gelbard, the manager of the Planning Division, said that the Planning and Traffic Management departments had-n’t seen the final public presentation -— only preliminary concepts. She added that the 20th/Cloverfield streetscape project was strictly a “greening” project and the planter location would have been corrected when the final engineering drawings were done because there was “no intention to change traffic patterns.” Honest mistake? Deliberate? Either way, it explains why we have so much bad traffic, here.
However, knowing how much City Hall likes to screw with vehicular traffic, it’ll be interesting to see if the planter and overly large curb radii somehow turn up in the final streetscape plan after going before our traffic calming, gridlock-loving City Council — or, worse yet, what future lane striping schemes will pop up to vex the 18,000 motorists traveling along 20th Street each day.
Speaking of City Council, last Tuesday’s meeting didn’t go well for residents. City Council approved the concept and initiated a development agreement for a controversial 325-unit housing project on 3.3 acres of open public land in the Civic Center. “The Village” will set new standards for height (96 feet) and density. Kudos to Councilmen Bobby Shriver and Bob Holbrook for voting against this ugly behemoth.
The council also voted to remove a number of mature Ficus and Palm trees on Second and Fourth streets, between Wilshire Boulevard and Colorado Avenue, as a part of a $8.2-million redo of downtown streets parallel to the Third Street Promenade. The tree removal has angered many Santa Monicans as unnecessary and a waste of beautiful foliage. Kevin McKeown was the lone vote to save the trees.
City Council voted to reappoint Terry O’Day to a second term on Planning Commission. School advocate, Gleam Davis and sustainable city advocate, Jim Ries from the Pico Neighborhood were tapped for inaugural terms on the commission. Somehow, I sense that this body is heading toward an even more Utopian and pro-development inclination — a direction I think most Santa Monicans wish not to travel.
Considering there might be two or more possible Planning Commissioners contemplating a City Council run in the 2008 elections, you can bet I’ll be watching their voting very closely.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 20, 2007. Read the original PDF.