Tonight the City will hold the first of their “traffic forums” at the Foothill Library from 6 pm to 7:40 pm. Two other forums are planned for each succeeding Wednesday night (but for some reason the Foothill forum is only 100 minutes long but the other forums at 120 minutes long). It seems appropriate to begin in Foothill Ranch (FR) because the bulk of the nearly 5,000 new homes are being built within one mile east or west of the 241 Freeway, meaning the FR and Portola Hills (PH) areas of the city will experience an enormous increase in traffic.
Bear in mind, these forums were given life by a City Council that refused to look at setting up a Traffic Committee. It’s the same City Council that promised synchronized traffic signals throughout the City for the past decade, and just voted to extend the time to completion for another 2 years. It’s the same City Council that has been told, time and again, that the citizens were upset with traffic congestion, yet every year traffic congestion remains one of the chief concerns of the public. It’s the same City Council who failed, year after year, to get the Portola Pkwy extension completed.
Below I’ve sketched out some issues that should be addressed by the traffic forum. While we focus on traffic, it’s only one of the challenges that the 5,000 new homes are going to create. Other issues include the impact on our school system, our ability to supply water and electricity to all these new users, access to public services such as the library, the post office, and the DMV, etc. These other issues are beyond the scope of this forum, but we shouldn’t forget that they exist and they need to be addressed as well.
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BIG INCREASE IN A SHORT TIME
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Together, FR and PH have about 6,000 housing units. So adding another 4,000+ units to the mix means that the number of housing units will increase by more than 67% which is an enormous increase in a relatively short time period. The situation is even worse than that, because south of El Toro and east of Portola, Mission Viejo plans to add new homes in the vacant hills across from the Church. Though these homes will technically be in Mission Viejo, they will additive to the PH traffic and undoubtedly use El Toro and Portola.
What are the implications of such a huge increase? And such a huge increase in such a short time? Are there any other examples of a community that did this? What happened to them?
GETTING KIDS TO SCHOOL
Assuming the demographics for these new homes is similar to the existing FR/PH profile, we can expect about 50% of the families to have children under the age of 18. With an average 3.2 people per household and about 31% of them under the age of 18, we can expect more than 4,000 school age children. In addition to presenting problems to the school district, school age children present traffic problems. Anyone who ever dropped off their kid at Foothill Elementary School knows that there is a morning and afternoon traffic jam that makes the 5 Freeway look like a holiday.
The problem with the new kids and the old schools is that none of the new homes are near the old schools. Many kids walk to Serrano and/ or ETHS, and some even walk to FR and PH Elementaries. But the new homes are all going to require that the kids be transported to and from. From what I’ve seen at various schools, most parents drive their own kids, and there are very few examples of carpooling. If the district doesn’t provide buses (and I haven’t heard that they will), this means an extra 3,000+ cars on the road going to and from schools.
What are the implications of this dramatic increase in school children going to and from school?
THE SPORTS PARK
Everyone is exciting about the new Sports Park. With all the new fields and all the great new amenities, it’s sure to attract a lot of people, not only to participate in the games but also to watch the games. Unfortunately, this great new addition to our City sits smack dab in the middle of the FR/PH area. How will this additional traffic impact the overall traffic problems?
Keep in mind that Baker Ranch, not content to add 2,300+ new homes to our City is now trying to squeeze another 250 homes, many of them multi-family, into the vacant lot across from the Sports Park. So this will not only increase overall traffic, but may begin to cause problems around the Sports Park.
THE GREAT PARK
Someday, probably in our lifetimes, the Great Park will actually exist. When that happens, you can be sure that hundreds of cars will come to and from the Great Park using Lake Forest streets to get there. This traffic is going to go through the middle of the City. Have we accounted for this additional traffic?
EXISTING PROBLEMS
Right now anyone who lives in Lake Forest knows that during the day there are traffic jams in several places. For example, try to go down El Toro Rd going south below Muirlands and get ready to sit in traffic almost anytime. The big jams come around Raymond (right hand turns for the Post Office), around Rockfield (right hand turns for Home Depot), and near the Freeway (completely crazy traffic going in every direction). If we have these problems now, what’s going to happen when another 1,500+ homes are added to the south side of the City where El Toro is the main thoroughfare to get to the Freeway?
According to one long-time resident of the City who knows a lot about our traffic problems, who has studied the new plans and spoken with the City’s consulting traffic engineer, most of the major traffic problems in the City are not being addressed in the new plans, and most of what is being done with the $12 million they plan to spend involves re-striping lanes. This is very worrisome.
If you live in FR or PH you will want to come to the forum. It’s 6 pm at the FR Library.
