■ “I do not shop in downtown Santa Monica. The only time I go down to the Third Street Promenade is to go to the movies. The traffic is still a mess. When they narrowed the driving lanes to one for cars they created more of a mess. I live at Seventh and Wilshire and traffic comes to a standstill on the weekends. The same is true for Lincoln Boulevard, Colorado and Broadway. The city needs to stop construction of any new buildings and apartments. When there are more tenants and employees traffic is a mess, as well parking. There is not much that can be done. You can’t close the barn door after the horse is loose.” ■ “It certainly isn’t any easier driving downtown. It took me 20 minutes to get from Lincoln on Broadway to the bike shop on the corner of Fifth. $15 million? HA! It’s a joke.” ■ “The transit mall seems nice except when there is an emergency situation or a response to a Code 3 with lights and sirens. People are afraid to pull over into the transit lanes because they think they will get a ticket. It’s confusing. Second, if there is an accident on the corner, people need to pull over to the side of the roads but, those are transit lanes. It blocks all traffic!” ■ “It’s little wonder that the Santa Monica City Council finds themselves short on the 2002-2003 budget. Why they wasted all that money redoing the street, chopping down the trees, replacing the sidewalks, and putting chairs out for the bums and alcoholics and punk kids to sleep on is beyond me! The City Council re-did the entire downtown so they could draw all the Westwood crowd to Santa Monica along with the traffic that it entails. Now that they have all this done all weekend and most nights all one hears is a nut in the middle of the intersection blowing that little whistle trying to get the traffic to move, North, South, East and West. And I can say is that it is a lost cause. My hats off to the Santa Monica City Council for proving that it doesn’t take brains to run City Hall. P.S. Thanks for giving Adelphia Cable the run of the city. Good going Adelphia! It’s belly up time! Santa Monica picks another winner.” ■ “It’s deplorable now. It used to be bad but now it’s almost intolerable. I would suggest going back to the one way streets to alleviate some of the traffic. Also, synchronize the stop lights on Lincoln and Wilshire. It’s impossible to get down those streets. Santa Monica made a bad decision with the traffic.” ■ “The traffic is clearly no better than it was before. It’s visibly worse. Since the end of construction it’s still my observation that traffic is backing up into the intersections creating gridlock for every direction. It’s also been my observation as a Santa Monica resident that now the city is posting police officers at intersections to prevent this problem and ordering cars to stop and direct them to prevent these tie-ups. At what cost does this come to the residents in Santa Monica? There are two solutions that you have here. Eliminate the bus only lanes in the downtown area, or, as a Santa Monica resident, avoid the downtown businesses all together. My wife and I used to go to the Reel Inn restaurant, we have not been in two months.” ■ “I’m a business owner in the downtown Santa Monica area and the bus only lane is absolutely ridiculous. It seems to be more congested than it was before. I cannot understand why they do not have the buses use Fourth Street as their route to the beach area and make this more of a walking community. I will never understand what makes Santa Monica tick and why they make some of the decisions that they make but in my humble opinion it’s a nice upgrade, however, it does not truly flow traffic any better that it had before and is sometimes worse.” ■ “Heck no! It’s twice as congested as it ever was and I’ve lived here my whole life. People who can’t get down Santa Monica Boulevard are now using side streets and blocking up those streets! Everything is jammed. I avoid downtown like the plague these days, especially on weekends. Try one-way streets people like every other city has done!” ■ “I think that the traffic situation in Santa Monica is now a disaster and that the mayor of Santa Monica should take a hint from another mayor. I believe it was in South America who closed off downtown completely and bused people in. It made it much better and businesses are thriving supposedly in this area, so, look it up!” ■ “Driving is worse. They should make the streets back into one-way streets. That makes too much sense for this city. Everything is backwards.” ■ “I still believe very strongly that the Broadway exit for the mall is very confusing. Who has the right of way? When is your turn? There is still blowing of horns and confusion. The traffic never stops coming. The cars that want to go into the structure just keep piling up. It’s been like this for years. It’s no good!” ■ “Who are we kidding? We have fewer lanes and no one-way streets. Of course the traffic is worse. Santa Monica Boulevard is unbelievable! The intersections are full when the signals change. There is no improvement and there won’t be as long as we have this misguided traffic calming policy.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 12, 2002. Read the original PDF.