Calming the Traffic Beast
By Frank Gruber
I wasn't able to attend the meeting last Tuesday about the future of
the dangerous stretch of Ocean Park Boulevard that runs past John Adams
Middle School, which was too bad for me because I am a major Ocean Park
Boulevard user and intensely interested in what measures the City takes
to calm the traffic beast there. (see
story)
I consider myself something of an expert on Ocean Park Boulevard. Down
at the Ocean Park end, my house is about a block off the boulevard,
and so it's our major east-west surface route. My son attended John
Adams, and two of my favorite Santa Monica stores -- Merrihew's Nursery
and Bob's Market -- are located just where there's been so much trouble
with cars running into people and other cars.
The commercial stretch that starts with the nursery and continues east
of the blocks under study features shops, restaurants, coffee houses
and services that are 100% homegrown. Kramer Sporting Goods is a local
institution like Merrihew's and the Bob's meat department. But unfortunately
the pounding the strip takes from the four lanes of Ocean Park Boulevard
has prevented it from becoming a truly comfortable focus for a walking
neighborhood.
The four lanes of traffic also make the street dangerous to cross.
Aside from the fact that having two lanes in each direction encourages
motorists to drive too fast to stop in time for pedestrians, they require
the pedestrian to try to see "around" the cars in the near
lane of traffic and guess what the cars in the next lane are going to
do. Of course drivers of those cars typically can't see pedestrians
starting to cross because cars in the outside lane block the view.
All you drivers and all you pedestrians know what I am talking about.
While the four "mix-and-match" plans the City presented at
Tuesday's meeting (and which may be viewed via the Lookout's article)
have a lot of promise in that they all address the "four-lane"
issue, I fear that they are all either or both impractical or misguided.
The impractical part is that they will cost too much money, and the
City has not identified any source of funding for a project of this
magnitude. Widening sidewalks is a great idea, but it costs a bundle,
mainly because of the storm drains and utilities. The idea of taking
10 feet of land from the John Adams play fields to make more parking
should be a nonstarter.
Similarly, although angled parking can work well in many contexts,
it won't work if the roadway is so tight -- as in this case -- that
drivers will have a hard time backing out of their angled spaces into
traffic they can't see. And until the state authorizes cities to adopt
reverse angle parking (whereby motorists back into their spaces -- as
with parallel parking -- and then drive out with a clear view of oncoming
traffic), angled parking will make the street even more dangerous for
cyclists, notwithstanding the bike lanes.
Furthermore, doing a lot of work on the blocks between 14th and 17th
while leaving the rest of Ocean Park Boulevard the way it is, will do
nothing for the rest of the street, which needs calming all the way
from Lincoln to the city line.
There is a solution that won't cost much and will also allow for a
test of how two-way traffic works, without making any permanent changes
in the streetscape. It's a solution that has worked already in Santa
Monica -- on Main Street and Montana Avenue and, for that matter, on
Ocean Park Boulevard west of Lincoln (although the goals of the latter
project were never fully realized).
The solution is to re-stripe the entire boulevard east of Lincoln to
allow for (i) parking on both sides (including on the narrower stretch
between Lincoln and 14th), (ii) bike lanes, (iii) one lane of traffic
in each direction, and (iv) a "universal" left turn lane in
the middle.
The beauty of the universal left turn lane is that while reducing the
traffic lanes by half, it still allows traffic to flow. The goal of
traffic calming is not to bollix up traffic, but to keep it flowing
at a safe speed -- typically under 30 mph. With a middle left turn lane,
for example, traffic doesn't have to stop when a car is parking, but
rather it slows down while cars go around the obstacle.
Because there is always something going on in the shared lane, motorists
can't rev up like they can when streets have physical dividers like
those the City installed on Pico -- there's no "divided highway"
affect.
Meanwhile, pedestrians have only one lane of traffic to worry about
at any give moment, and there's a relatively safe haven in the middle.
Additional parking west of 14th, which can be metered, would not only
be welcomed in the community, but the parked cars would also provide
a needed buffer between pedestrians on the sidewalk and the traffic.
As for parking, City staff has also come up with excellent ideas for
adding parking to some of the alleys and using metering to manage parking
better. The Ocean Park commercial district would be an excellent location
for trying out some of the ideas of UCLA Prof. Don Shoup, who argues
for increasing parking meter rates, but then channeling the revenues
into improvements that benefit the immediate area.
Ocean Park Boulevard is a good place to think less grandly, but more
effectively.
* * *
I have previously written about the Jacaranda chamber music series,
which has for several years presented top-caliber chamber music in Santa
Monica at the First Presbyterian Church on Second Street. While the
Jacaranda people seem more interested in the music than the urbanism
issues, I have made the point that in an era when fewer Santa Monicans
want to brave the crossing of the 405, Jacaranda at least has given
local classical music fans an alternative.
In any case, it's a pleasure to report that after flitting about the
region for this season while the congregation of First Pres renovated
their sanctuary and overhauled their pipe organ, Jacaranda will return
to its home for what promises to be a fabulous concert April 7, at 8
p.m.
The concert, named "Amazing Grace" for a string quartet by
Ben Johnston that's on the program, the concert will be an all-American,
all-20th century affair featuring music by, in addition to Johnston,
Scott Joplin, Frederick Rzewski, Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, and Steve
Reich.
No doubt "Amazing Grace" also refers to the delight Jacaranda
feels moving to the renovated First Pres sanctuary. Last Wednesday at
lunch the church and Jacaranda held a preview of the "new"
hall and the overhauled organ.
 |
| The newly renovated sanctuary
at the First Presbyterian Church |
Patrick Scott, the series' producer, announced plans for the next two
seasons, which will, for the centennial of his birth, feature the work
of French composer Olivier Messiaen, as well as the work of composers
who influenced him, and that of composers he influenced or taught.
Messiaen, according to Mr. Scott, was the greatest composer of organ
music since Bach, and that bodes well for Jacaranda patrons, because
listening to a pipe organ in an intimate space like the First Pres sanctuary
is an overwhelming experience. Wednesday, Mark Alan Hilt, the artistic
director of Jacaranda, showed off the First Pres organ by playing the
Toccata from Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
Wow. Let's just say Mr. Hilt pulled out all the stops.
(For concert details go to the Jacaranda
site.)
Notices.
Just a reminder, the City will be conducting a series of neighborhood
workshops on placemaking, on March 26, 28, and April 5, as part of the
LUCE update process. For details, go to the public
notice posted in The Lookout. |
