Solving the Traffic Problems with a 2-legged Stool

We’ve been talking about traffic in Lake Forest this week. On Monday we looked at the results of the traffic forums held a few months ago as the Council’s excuse not to appoint a Traffic Commission. According to the staff report, only 2 of 39 people expressed any favorable comments about the traffic in the City or the way that the City is handling it, and only 2 of 136 comments were positive. Indeed many of the comments were very negative about how badly the City was handling the traffic problems in the City.

On Wednesday we discussed the current traffic situation and the upcoming “Traffic Tsunami” in which 42,000+ new vehicle trips are going to be added to the City in the near future. Bear in mind, compared to other cities in South Orange County, our residents are among the unhappiest with traffic, and that’s before we get 42,000+ more vehicles on the road.

The City staff and the Council are pathetic in their explanation. They claim that “it could be worse”. Had they been allowed to fully build out all the open areas in the City, they claim the new traffic would be even worse. What they fail to say, perhaps because they don’t understand basic Economics 101, is that the prospects of the open areas in the City being fully built on is extremely unlikely, given the economy. In fact, it was exactly that reason – the unlikely use of all the open areas for commercial purposes – which the staff and Council used as their rationale for converting the space to residential uses. IOW, absent the desire of City Council members to get tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions by soliciting money from developers and then allowing them to convert commercial to residential space (making them millions of dollars in profits) we wouldn’t have 42,000+ new vehicles trips omn the horizon.

In addition to denial, and refusing to create a Traffic Commission, the City is dealing with the traffic problems with a two legged stool. Leg 1 is traffic signal synchronization and Leg 2 involves tinkering with intersections.

TRAFFIC SIGNAL SYNCHRONIZATION

It’s really hard to believe but we live in a City where the traffic signals are not fully synchronized. We’ve been reading for years (maybe decades) that the signals were going to be synchronized. Scott Voigts even made this a campaign promise in 2010 (one of many he broke). But in 2014 we are nowhere near finished and the Council just voted to extend the time for finishing the complete synchronization.

In addition to being only partially synchronized, according to the Public Works Director, problems with faulty equipment mean that what we do have doesn’t always work. Of course, none of this is news to anyone who lives in the City and drives our streets. It comes as a surprise to most of the City staff who live elsewhere, but to those of us who drive the City streets on a daily basis, the long waits at lights (even when there is NO cross traffic) and the failures of right/left turn signals to work, etc. are well known.

The problem with traffic synchronization is that it is a very fragile system. Even a fully built-out system (which we don’t have) with 100% up-time equipment (which we don’t have) still breaks down because of the entry of pedestrians and cars onto the main roads.

Traffic signal synchronization will not solve the existing traffic problems and it won’t solve the problem when the “Traffic Tsunami” hits. It is a good thing to do and, in fact, we should be ashamed of ourselves that in 2014 we are still looking out several years before this project will be finished, and even worse, the Council just extended the time for completion.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the second leg – intersection tinkering.