Traffic Committee Starts Their Engines

I had a very busy day last Tuesday so when I arrived at the inaugural meeting of the Traffic Advisory Group (TAG) it had already started. The City’s law firm was busy warning everyone about the Brown Act and the Public Records Act and generally doing what lawyers do. The first thing I noticed was that there were no arrangements for the public – no agenda, no public speaking forms, and worst of all, no cookies and coffee. Fortunately, there was only one “public” present.

The next thing I noticed was that there was nearly as many staff as there were TAG members. I looked around and saw only 6 of the 7 appointed members – Scott Drapkin was missing.

As soon as the lawyer finished, the staff began to manage the committee. Staff set out a schedule that eliminated two meetings (November and December), and then programmed the rest of the sessions with specific topics (e.g., Traffic Signal Operations, Traffic Modeling, Capital Projects, etc.) Click Here if you want to review it yourself. The goal was for the committee to review what the staff was doing and then offer their recommendations to the Council by the end of March.

I was confused. I never thought of the TAG as a peer review of the traffic engineering division of the City’s Department of Public Works. I had been advocating for a citizen committee for years, but never with the intention that we would try to turn them into mini-staff members. In fact, my personal preference, which I stated on many occasions, was to get a fresh view on the traffic issues, rather than a superficial rehash of what we were already doing.

TAG member John Irish was the first to note the difficult position the committee would be in if they adopted the premises set forth by the staff. Derek Wieske added his concern that eliminating two meetings was problematic, and suggested that adding meetings was more appropriate than subtracting meetings. The discussion took another turn when Tim Redwine suggested that there were micro-events that concerned him, rather than the curriculum set forth by the staff.

At this point, Public Works Director Tom Wheeler changed pace. Rather than stick to the manicured agenda prepared, he veered off course and began a very constructive free-wheeling discussion. The panel identified nearly 30 specific problems they wanted to cover in one manner or another. Broadly speaking they fell into the following categories –

• · Identifying and correcting signal lights that aren’t working
• · Identifying and correcting signal lights that work, but aren’t functioning as well as they should
• · Identifying dangerous intersections, why they are dangerous, and what the traffic control implications are.
• · Studying the traffic congestion at schools and possible ways to alleviate it.
• · Reconsidering the Portola Pkwy extension and the Ridge Rte. Overpass as ways to divert traffic.
• · Considering the benefits of bike lanes and round-abouts
• · Considering right turn only lanes, left turn arrows, etc.

Following the discussion, the agenda returned to the Staff’s script and the presentation they used at the traffic forums last year.

My overall impression was positive. If the TAG committee members can stay focused, use the staff as resources, identify some critical problems, do their homework, come up with some reasonable alternatives, test their hypotheses, and collect data on the results, we are on our way to improving traffic problems in the City.

I’d encourager anyone interested in traffic in the City to show up at the next meeting. They are every fourth Tuesday at 7 pm at City Hall.

COMMENTS

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on December 12 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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