City Watch

The Council is meeting once again this week and there are a few items of interest. Today we’ll discuss traffic.

TRAFFIC FORUMS (Item 20)

When the Council rejected the idea of a traffic commission, despite their specific promises to establish one, they offered instead the idea that having 3 traffic forums in which City staff explained to people why the traffic was so bad would be the cure-all. Once people knew what was happening, everything would be OK.

According to the City, 39 people attended the 3 forums and produced a total of 136 responses as catalogued in the City’s report. The City says that the comments received from the 39 people “have been extremely valuable in highlighting areas of concern.”

Of the total 136 responses reported by the City, only 2 were positive. One person at the City Hall meeting said that he noticed an improvement in traffic signal synchronization and one person at Lake 2 thought the traffic forums were a “step in the right direction”. IOW, as catalogued by the City staff, 134 of 136 comments are negative. That’s quite a record by itself.

Almost all the comments were focused on either a local issue (e.g., noise at Bake, traffic on El Toro) or reflected unhappiness about the lack of planning by the City.

ACTION ON LOCAL ISSUES

The City staff found 7 local issues that they singled out and subsequently addressed and then discussed in the report. Here they are along with my brief summary of their response.

· Congestion along Los Alisos – not our problem. Talk to Mission Viejo

· Congestion at ETHS events – made a few minor changes to signage, but don’t know if it helped.

· Install “No Outlet” sign on Cherry Ave – City put up a sign.

· Make left turn at Rockfield and Orchard – not our problem.

· Make left turn at Muirlands into Pep Boys center – working on it, but won’t be able to allow a left turn when exiting.

· Install crosswalk on Prado Lane at Toledo Way – don’t need it.

· Finish the Portola Gap – working on it, but don’t hold your breath.

All things considered, this is a pretty pathetic result, although it’s not entirely worthless. Of the 7 items on which the City took action, they took no action on 3 of them, put up a few signs, and they’re working on the rest. Bear in mind that these 7 items the City chose for “action items” were probably the least significant items mentioned.

INACTION ON MAJOR ISSUES

If you read through the City report, you’ll find that the major issue mentioned more times than any other is the problem of traffic congestion on El Toro. It received 20% of the total responses, and was mentioned significantly at all 3 forums. Yet not a single action item was addressed to the many problems on El Toro, some of which are local and some of which are systemic.

Before you throw up your hands and say (as the staff has) “What could we do?” - think about it. One of the main reasons for the congestion on El Toro between Muirlands and the 5 Freeway is the plain and simple fact that almost all of the side streets enter and exit on El Toro. For example, if you are among the hundreds of people who live off of Raymond Way, to the North or South of El Toro, your only way in and out of your neighborhood is El Toro. What moron designed that? It’s even worse, because not only are thousands of vehicle trips every day coming in and out of that street and pouring onto El Toro, those are also the streets that people have to use for the Post Office (North) or the Library (South). Eck Gads!

So here’s an idea for the Planning Commission that refuses to do any planning and a note for Chairperson Hamilton - Instead of cancelling meetings or adjourning so they can go home early, let’s look at ways to develop alternate exits for all the dead-end streets along El Toro. That one step could easily reduce the traffic congestion on El Toro by 50%.

SO MUCH MORE

There is so much more to say about traffic congestion and effective ways we should be using to deal with this problem, but that will have to wait for a future issue. Suffice it to say that the report back to the Council on the traffic forums makes it abundantly clear that a Traffic Commission is needed.

Tomorrow we’ll take up a few more issues for the Tuesday meeting.