By KIM COWHERD A special slave to the Daily Planet
Feel like you’re going around in circles in Santa Monica?
Getting around will soon be easier thanks to the City Council and citizens who participated in a recent Santa Monica Traffic Planning Commission workshop last month.
“We took traffic issues to the people and the people have spoken,” said City Council newcomer Bobby Coniver, whose been credited with the ideas.
Coniver explained the council took all of the suggestions submitted at the workshop, fed the data into a CAL- TRANS computer and came up with a solution that took everyone’s two cents into account in an effort to finally unclog the city’s car-clogged streets.
“The computer we used for this is similiar to the one that controls the space shuttle launches,” Coniver said about the megacomputer that was loaned to Santa Monica by NASA. “Allievating traffic congestion isn’t rocket science and you can’t argue with something this sophisticated. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation has been using this same system to ease traffic congestion along the 405 Freeway at Sunset, Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard — and we know how well the traffic moves along in those areas.”
The new traffic regulations will go into effect starting April 1 and according to Coniver, will cut traffic congestion by 183.692 percent.
The new regulations call for both left and right hand turns on Montana Avenue, Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard to be restricted between 26th Street through Ocean Avenue between the hours of 1 a.m. through 11 p.m.
To reach destinations located on south-north running streets such as Lincoln Boulevard and Second through 25th streets, commuters will need to enter from designated turn lanes located on San Vicente Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard. Once commuters are on those streets, they must return to Olympic Boulevard or San Vicente Boulevard to make left or right hand turns on to east/west running streets.
“We’re really looking forward to a tremendous drop in traffic and we have found that if we can make it as difficult as possible for people to drive, they eventually will give up,” said Santa Monica Mayor Ham O’Thronner. “Sure, it might require a bit of a sacrifice, but the aggregate result will be a level of traffic we haven’t seen in this city since the 1950s.”
O’Thronnor said the new rules would also apply to bicycle riders, who have found to be just as much of pain in the ass as motorists.
But still, everything appears to be fine in Santa Monica.
“I don’t have any information on that but I can tell you that everything is peachy in this city by the sea,” said City Hall public information officer Trudy Ramblinon.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 1, 2005. Read the original PDF.