Traffic in Lake Forest - Real Solutions

We spent last week talking about traffic in Lake Forest. On Monday we reported that at the 3 recent traffic forums 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 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.

On Friday we looked at leg 2 of the City’s two-legged stool – tinkering with intersections, and pointed out that all the critical intersections were not being impacted and the basic striping and lane additions, while helpful, were hardly a panacea for the magnitude of the traffic congestion problem.

This week we’ll talk about what the City isn‘t doing, but what could be done for some real solutions to our traffic problems.

URBAN RE-DESIGN

The 3rd leg in the City’s armamentarium should be urban design, or perhaps more accurately “re-design”. Many areas have been designed in such a manner that they actually cause congestion. My favorite example is El Toro Rd., the busiest street in the City and one of the streets with the worst design.

Several streets are dead-end streets and require entry and exit onto El Toro. This design flaw creates choke-points. Anyone who lives in the City (which most of the City staff don’t, including the City Manager) know this every time they approach Raymond and or Rockfield and or the Freeway. Over the next few days I’m going to start at the Freeway and move Eastward up El Toro. It’s important to look at these streets in detail so I want to provide pictures as well as text.

It’s also important to counteract the lies and half-truths that are being told about these situations. You will be told that it is too expensive to make some of these changes, but you can judge for yourself.

Each of the examples we discuss will seem like no-brainers, but they must be fully studied, risk benefit analyses conducted, discussions initiated with concerned parties, and impacts projected. Ideally we should have a Traffic Commission to undertake these tasks, because it should be clear by now that neither the Planning Commission, nor the City staff, nor the Council are up to it.

BRIDGER AND SWARTZ

Close to the Freeway, Bridger and Swartz are both dead-end streets. Both of these streets could easily be converted to through streets. In the case of Bridger, it dead-ends into a City park (See the picture). In the case of Swartz Dr. there really is a back way out, past the Ross Stores and into the parking lot that exits onto Rockfield. The costs of opening Bridger would be minimal, and the costs of opening Swartz would be even less.

For truly advertureous souls, this would provide a complete back way from Ridge Route to the 5 freeway using Gowdy, useful for people going South on the 5 freeway or wanting to go to Laguna Hills. This would alleviate some of the traffic that enters El Toro from Rockfield, which is another choke point.

THE FUTURE CNG STATION

For some insane reason, the Planning Commission and the Council approved putting a CNG unmanned fueling station at the corner of Bridger and El Toro. That means that (a) lots of new slow accelerating traffic will come into the City to fuel up, and then (b) they will exit onto El Toro Rd at one of the most crowded and critical sections of the City. Bear in mind that CNG vehicles have trouble accelerating (due to the nature of the fuel), so these new cars are going to try to enter El Toro at a point where cars are already trying to line up to be in the Freeway entry lane. This is a disaster waiting to happen, and will not only add to the traffic problem, it may create explosions if one of these CNG vehicles is rear-ended with enough force.

The cost of preventing this disaster is $0. There is absolutely no need to allow the CNG vehicles to exit onto El Toro. They could easily exit onto Bridger, but even this option has problems. Making a left turn out of the Scarantino parking lot and getting into the right hand turn lane on Bridger in order to be able to enter the freeway is a perilous journey. As I argued before the Planning Commission, this project should have never been approved. BTW – Planning Commissioner Hamilton is running for City Council and he was one of the strongest advocates for allowing the CNG unmanned fueling station to exit onto El Toro.

THE SHOPPING CENTERS

Have you ever seen worse urban design than the shopping centers East and West of Rockfield, just South of El Toro. Going from one shopping center to the other is nearly impossible. Forced left and right hand turn lanes and the inability to cross from one shopping center to the other means that traffic has to stay on busy streets.

BOTTOM LINE

Poor planning is a major cause of traffic congestion Re-designing the urban environment will go a long way toward alleviating the congestion, and in many areas of the City the costs of doing this are minimal. Instead the City is spending MILLIONS of dollars to try to mitigate the congestion, when preventing the congestion is a far better and cost effective strategy.

Tomorrow we’ll move East on El Toro and look at Raymond Way.