Traffic in Lake Forest - 2nd Leg of the 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.

On Thursday we looked at the City’s still unfinished traffic light synchronization plans, and pointed out that even a well-functioning fully built-out system has flaws. That being said, the City’s system is neither well-functioning nor fully built out.

Today we’ll focus on the 2nd leg of the City’s approach to solving our traffic problems.

INTERSECTION TINKERING

There are 15 intersections targeted, most of which are along Lake Forest Drive or Bake Pkwy. $10,410, 000 is to be spent, and this money will come from the developers. Shea/Baker will cough up $6M, followed by Baldwin (Portola) at $2.5M, then IRWD (Serrano Summit) at $1.4M. If you’re interested, the 66 page report is on the City’s website.

What makes the staff believe that an already bad problem, about to be made significantly worse, can be solved by tweaking 15 intersections?

Bear in mind that most of the “tinkering” consists of striping and the occasional adding of a turn lane. While these changes will probably be good, a long-time traffic activist in Lake Forest has reviewed the plans and informs me that there are not enough intersections being targeted and the changes are too superficial.

Even worse, these changes are being recommended by the same staff and consultants that got us into this mess in the first place. These are the same people who are telling us right now that we don’t have a traffic problem, and if we let them spend $10,000,000 tinkering with the intersections, the new 42,000+ vehicles on our roads every day won’t cause us any trouble. But if they are wrong about the current state, how can we have confidence they can solve the future problems?

TWO-LEGGED STOOLS

Several people asked me – “What good is a 2-legged stool?” Exactly. That’s the point. A 2-legged stool will not stand. There needs to be 3 and maybe even 4 legs to a stool before it will perform adequately. Traffic light synchronization and intersection tinkering may be effective in helping solve the traffic problems, but by themselves they are no panacea. On Monday we’ll discuss two more legs