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Health & Fitness

The Traffic Tsunami - Part 2 (Calm Before the Storm)

Did the "traffic calming" workshop calm the people's concerns?

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Last night the City held a “traffic calming” workshop. As I reported , the workshop concerns plans to squeeze nearly 1,000 new homes (and 10,000 square feet of commercial space) into open space around Glenn Ranch Rd.

More than 100 men, women, and children from Portola Hills were there, along with a dozen senior city staffers (none of whom live in Portola Hills and few of whom even live in the City), and a consortium of builders and others behind the proposed development (they were met with loud boos and hisses when their name was mentioned). Three council members were there – Scott Voigts (looking a little haggard), Marcia Rudolph (looking very frail), and Kathy McCullough (looking resplendid). All the members of the Planning Commission were on hand, including Terry Anderson who, in addition to , was the only other candidate running for city council present.

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The moderator was Joe Foust, a self-proclaimed “old time traffic engineer”, who was hired by the city for his skills in “traffic calming” (more about that later). Joe has a company in Irvine and he lives in La Habra. People familiar with my call to will see that this is another example of Lake Forest money being spent on people/businesses in other cities.

It turns out that Joe has been trying to improve traffic for more than 40 years. In his youth he specialized in moving traffic more quickly. In those days he widened streets and put in turn lanes to keep the cars moving. But as he aged, his interests changed and now he’s been spending more time “calming” traffic. IOW, he specializes in making cars go slower, which apparently makes people feel better (unless they’re in a hurry). Some of the tools in Joe’s toolbox now include making streets narrower, adding raised medians, putting in roundabouts and chokers, etc.

One of the first things Joe said was that in more than 200 projects he’s been involved with, the school in Portola Hills is one of the worst situated from a traffic perspective. In fact, all of Portola Hills is just “terrible” according to Joe, a result of poor County planning and the failure of the City to do anything constructive since we took over the area many years ago.

Joe has some serious doubts that the situation can be made significantly better, but he does have some hopes that after a lot of study and 3 or 4 more workshops, we’ll be able to come up with some plans that will improve the existing situation.

Hmm. You’re thinking that if the existing situation is so bad, what on Earth are we doing talking about adding nearly 1,000 more homes and 3,000 more cars.

You’re not alone. The very first question, from a woman who lives on Malabar Road, was exactly that. In fact, there were half dozen questions exactly like that. One extremely knowledgeable man picked up a 6 ounce glass of water and tried to pour it into a 4 ounce glass, hoping to make his point, which he did to the applause of the audience.

As the meeting progressed, my mind wandered to one of my favorite films from the 1960s when Joe Foust was just starting in his chosen field.  It’s “Cool Hand Luke” and the line that keep repeating in my mind was from the great actor Strother Martin – “What we have here is a failure to communicate”. Joe Faust seems like a really nice guy and we’re told he’s worked a long time in this field, but Joe is looking at ways to slow traffic down and most everybody there was looking for a way to (a) correct the structural problems, (b) speed traffic up and (c) stop the new development which will only pour 6 ounces of cars into a space that can barely hold 4 ounces.

Stay tuned. Joe plans to do a lot of studying between now and the end of the year and he plans to conduct 2 or 3 more workshops to fill us in on his findings. But, it seemed to me, come hell or high water, between the developers, the City, the Planning Commission, and the City Council, 6 ounces of car are going to be squeezed into a 4 ounce cup and we’d better get used to it. It seems that money has changed hands and agreements have been signed and no one in power is willing to stand up and say “Wait! Are you crazy?”

As I said in of this blog, I am not against development. I have no desire to go back to the days of the horse and carriage. But “development at any cost” is not my mantra either. The good citizens of Portola Hills have made their needs perfectly clear. Clean up the many traffic problems we have now. That should be the priority. Even better, clean up these problems with a focus on how, if it’s feasible, new developments can be added that will not disrupt the smooth flow that is created after all the remedial work is completed. But to combine these two projects is a traffic tsunami waiting to start. Our City should commit to going ahead with traffic remediation in Portola Hills and then evaluate the results before we consider adding new homes.

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