In Agoura Hills, Opinions Collide Over Freeway Wall

Agoura Hills homeowner Mike Born was working in his driveway last August when he heard the squeal of tires over the normal din of traffic on the nearby Ventura Freeway.

Born glanced up to see a truck and a car--their wheels locked together--careening toward him.

They plowed through the flimsy chain-link freeway fence and crashed across the two-lane residential street that parallels the freeway in front of Born’s house. The truck veered into a neighbor’s yard and hit another fence, and the car bounced off a parked car and smashed into Born’s automobile.

Nerve Damage

No one was seriously hurt in the crash--if you don’t count the damage to the nerves of the 17 families whose Canwood Street homes sit about 75 feet from the freeway’s westbound slow lane.

After the wreck, nervous homeowners began lobbying for a wall between their street and the freeway. They began collecting noise readings, accident statistics and promises of help from local politicians.

But the issue of crash protection has also led to an unexpected collision of ideals among residents of the thousand-home Lake Lindero subdivision where Born lives.

Some homeowners want a low wall that will give the neighborhood a feeling of safety without the confining look of a prison. Others are asking for a high wall that will shield the community from noise as well as out-of-control cars.

Caught in the middle is the Agoura Hills City Council, which will apparently have to pay for whatever type of wall is built. The state Department of Transportation has warned the city that it has no money for a wall in the small town, 10 miles west of the San Fernando Valley.

Council members agreed Tuesday night to survey 250 Lake Lindero families living nearest to the freeway to find out whether they prefer a short wall or tall wall--or no wall at all. Officials also want to find out whether homeowners might be willing to form their own assessment district to help pay for a barrier.

“There’s a reluctance on the part of Caltrans to fund sound walls in areas where the freeway preceded residential development, as is the case along Canwood Street,” Michael W. Huse, Agoura Hills city manager, said Wednesday.

Robert K. Sandwick, Agoura Hills city engineer, said a 12-foot-high sound wall along the 2,100-foot section of Canwood Street west of Reyes Adobe Road would cost about $370,000. He told the council that such funding will not be available from Caltrans for 10 to 12 years--even if the state decides to build a Canwood Street wall.

Caltrans spokesman Thomas Knox said Wednesday that the wait would probably be shorter than that--perhaps only eight years.

Knox said his agency will put Agoura Hills on its sound-wall priority list if noise along Canwood measures 67 decibels or higher. Such a listing would make it possible for the city to apply for reimbursement from the state if the council decides to pay for a noise wall now.

Wall campaign leader Elizabeth Moore, a Lake Lindero resident, said Wednesday she is all for that.

Moore said she thinks most of her neighbors favor a high wall that would insulate the community from freeway traffic noise, which she said has been measured at 78 decibels.

“The more I talk to people, the more I’d love to see a big wall and big trees over there,” Moore said.

She said residents who live on hillsides inside the Lake Lindero subdivision, away from the freeway, “get a tremendous amount of noise.”

‘Obstruction to View’

But Born, who narrowly escaped being hit by the car and truck in August, said he favors a lower safety wall that would be heavily landscaped with shrubs and trees.

“A 12-foot wall would be an obstruction to the view. Safety is the real concern. I see no reason for a 12-foot wall,” he said.

If the split in opinion bogs down the wall plan, Born knows from the August crash how to react.

“I didn’t know which way the car and truck were going to go, whether they would split or stay together,” Born said Wednesday. “So I just high-tailed down the street as fast as I could run. I got a couple of houses down the street before they stopped.”