Addressing traffic was one of the key issues for Santa Monica planning officials, from the formulation of the Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE), to speeding along Ocean Park Boulevard, to the everyday concerns like the lack of parking.
City officials are currently in the process of formulating the Land Use and Circulation Element, a plan that will shape the city’s developmental landscape in the next 20 years. A good chunk of the plan addresses transportation-related matters, from public transit to congestion.
The Planning Department has hosted a series of workshops over the year, most recently this month, a session that focused solely on transportation. Residents in the workshop mainly raised concerns that have been heard throughout the decades — there’s not enough street parking, there’s too much traffic in the neighborhoods and there aren’t enough bike lanes to encourage people to get out of their cars.
“We want to make sure if there is change in Santa Monica, it makes Santa Monica better,” said Jeffrey Tumlin, a city traffic consultant for the LUCE project.
Five more LUCE workshops will be held after the new year.
One section of Santa Monicans saw some traffic solutions implemented recently when a stretch of Ocean Park Boulevard from Lincoln to Cloverfield boulevards was restriped from two lanes to one.
The move wasn’t very popular among the business owners and residents in Sunset Park, who argued that changing the street to one lane would increase congestion.
City officials said the street was restriped to enhance safety, addressing concerns of the increasing incidents of pedestrian and vehicular related accidents along Ocean Park Boulevard. The new one-lane Ocean Park Boulevard will be evaluated by city officials in the coming months.
“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,” Lucy Dyke, the city transportation planning manager.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 27, 2007. Read the original PDF.