Cruisers Cool It After Feeling Heat : Police Say Checkpoint Tactic Has Untied Balboa Blvd. Gridlock

A police patrol dubbed “Cruise Control” appears to have eased weekend gridlock on the crowded Balboa Peninsula, Newport Beach police reported Saturday.

Police last weekend began issuing citations to teen-age cruisers and rerouting cars combing the main drag of the popular summertime nightspot for fun. The result: Saturday night fever on the traffic-choked Balboa Peninsula seems to have cooled.

Interviews with police, merchants and residents revealed optimism about the experimental police program on Balboa Boulevard. On some nights earlier this summer, crowding caused up to one-hour delays for motorists trying to travel one mile down the street.

Things were different Friday night, however.

“This is the quietest weekend night we’ve had in three months,” said Lt. Paul Henisey, who was able to pack up his barricades and excuse a dozen officers early Friday night after some 2,500 cars flowed down Balboa Boulevard without much delay.

Police Lt. Donald Chandler reported that Saturday night’s traffic “is certainly an improvement” but that “we’ve still got a full contingent.”

Can’t ‘Create Problems’

Henisey attributed the policy’s apparent success this weekend to publicity about the traffic crackdown. He noted that young people in particular are more aware “that they can’t come down here to party and create problems that everyone else is affected by.”

Before the crackdown began July 18, police said traffic on the Balboa Peninsula was virtually brought to a halt by 16- to 25-year-olds from all over Orange County and as far away as Los Angeles and Riverside. The youths would jam Balboa Boulevard with cars and then turn the resulting gridlock into a mass party, car-hopping in groups to socialize, officers added.

On Friday, as they had for two previous weekends, police set up a roadblock on Balboa Boulevard at Palm Street and issued white warning cards, alerting drivers that they could not make repeat trips down the boulevard within a six-hour period.

The officers, stationed in the municipal parking lot at the base of the Balboa Pier as a cold night fog moved in off the ocean, shouted out license plate numbers to a colleague who frantically tried to punch the numbers into a computer.

The computer only spit back two licenses that were “repeaters,” a signal to police that the motorists had been through the checkpoint before, had no destination in particular and were just cruising up and down the narrow road.

On the weekend of July 25, police said, an estimated 5,000 cars inched down the boulevard and through the checkpoint from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m., with 11 repeaters tagged.

But Friday night, because of the easier traffic flow, police did not set up the roadblock and computer checkpoint until 10 p.m., and closed up before midnight, saying the traffic no longer warranted such intense monitoring.

Newport Police Chief Arb Campbell called the operation an experiment and said he would evaluate it this week “to make some determination as to how to proceed next Friday night.” Officers added that the cruise control operation may be used only as the occasion warrants, not every weekend in the future.

“The objective is not to discourage people from coming to Balboa,” Campbell said, “but to make it easier for them to get there and for emergency vehicles to be able to move quickly and freely.”

Two cruisers, Lisa Montgomery, 15, and Laura Heck, 14, felt differently.

As the two huddled outside of a pickup truck in their miniskirts while police cited Montgomery’s 18-year-old sister, Tami, for a missing front license plate, tinted windows and unfastened seat belts, the girls vowed never to return.

“We just come to look at guys or say hi,” said Heck, a ninth-grader from Garden Grove. “Really, it’s just something to do and it doesn’t cost anything.” After being admonished by Newport police, Lisa Montgomery, a 10th-grader from Westminster added, “I’m never gonna come back here again.”

Pleased With Tactic

Like many area merchants, Doug Cavanaugh, co-owner of Bubbles Balboa Club, was pleased with police tactics.

“They are definitely trying to do us a favor down here,” Cavanaugh said. “It has become a race track more or less for the kids down here and this (checkpoint) was one of the only alternatives.”

Cavanaugh said he didn’t object to the barricades and warning cards program “as long as it’s implemented carefully and they don’t scare off the good patrons who want to come to Balboa.

“The whole complexion of the people visiting here has really changed because of the upgrading of the Balboa Fun Zone and opening of new upscale restaurants.

“Before it was punk rockers down here in the summer--now we’re seeing younger families and older people,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s great on business, but tough on traffic.”

Max Dillman, owner of Dillman’s Restaurant at the corner of Balboa Boulevard and Main Street, was also impressed with the apparent progress police have made.

“I think they (police) got it all whipped now,” Dillman said. “The traffic tie-up was pretty bad a few weeks ago, but the last two, three times now have been better and better and better.”

Dayna Pettit, a 14-year Balboa resident and self-described community activist who came out to watch the traffic Friday night, observed: “It’s not like it’s been. We’re really pleased. I think by virtue of rumor among the kids, maybe (they realize) cruising is expensive and that police mean business.”