Simi Valley Finds Fast Growth Means Slow Traffic

Motorists were trapped in rush-hour traffic, running short on patience and long on delays.

Cars became backed up, idling through several green lights before inching through clogged intersections. Too many vehicles vied for too few lanes.

The scene was not downtown Los Angeles, where motorists have come to expect such tie-ups, but 40 miles away in the suburb of Simi Valley.

Such are the problems of economic growth in this eastern Ventura County city where the obvious has finally hit home--more jobs mean more cars. As congestion has worsened, city officials have seen that local streets cannot accommodate the dream they once had for their 33-square-mile city: to attract enough jobs so residents could live, work and play there without having to commute elsewhere.

That realization, coupled with motorists’ frustration, has spawned yet another local chapter of the slow-growth movement sweeping Southern California. Residents fed up with congestion are pushing a November ballot measure to tie growth to road improvements, and city officials are favoring a plan to reduce land set aside for industrial development.

Traffic Is Driving Force

“The driving force behind the changes is traffic,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said.

It is in the city’s west end, home to clusters of industrial and office parks, that the worst jams occur. Each weekday, thousands of employees working 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. there share this predicament with residents.

“It’s horrible,” said Peggie Noisette, a junior high school teacher who lives off Madera Road, a major north-south connector near the business parks. “To avoid an ulcer I leave 10 minutes early and bring some good music to sit in traffic.”

On typical mornings, Noisette said, she sits through three traffic-light cycles--each two minutes long--at main intersections on Madera Road.

City officials unwittingly helped set the stage for such congestion in 1980 by earmarking 2,000 acres around Madera Road for industrial development. So far fewer than 400 acres have been developed, but already the problems are evident.

Computer Projection

Moreover, a city-owned computer projects that if all 2,000 acres are developed, traffic congestion would become intolerable, Stratton said.

In response, the Simi Valley City Council says it will support a proposal to set aside 25%, or 513 acres, of the land as open space instead of targeting it for industry. The move would result in 20,000 fewer motorist trips a day on Madera Road, for example, officials said.

The proposal is part of the city’s larger general plan revision, which provides the blueprint for development in Simi Valley into the 1990s. City Council members are reviewing it during a series of ongoing public hearings.

Across the board, traffic congestion in Simi Valley--which in 1980 had more cars per capita than any U.S. city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau--is quickly galvanizing the community.

The ballot measure, backed by a group that calls itself Fight Intolerable Growth and Horrible Traffic, attracted nearly twice the 3,000 signatures it needed to qualify for the November election.

If passed, the measure would force developers whose projects would add to traffic problems to finance or make road improvements before receiving a building permit.

Council Opposition

As fervently as some residents support the measure, City Council members oppose it. They complain that it would tie the council’s hands and take a piecemeal approach to an issue that needs broader solutions.

Councilman Glen McAdoo called the slow-growth group “a few aspiring political wackos” in a speech in January, and said that the measure “is no way to solve the problem.”

But Paul La Bonte, leader of the ballot measure drive, countered that city officials “fail to see the forest for the trees,” and accused them of taking too narrow an approach to controlling growth.

La Bonte advocates setting goals for traffic flow and making certain that developers’ plans fit those goals.

The ballot measure and the scaling back of land for industrial development, along with a 2-year-old ordinance that bars building on the city’s surrounding hills, is altering what had historically been a pro-growth posture in Simi Valley.

In 1980, the city agreed upon a general plan that charted a course toward growth and development and it made attracting jobs its primary concern.

60% Are Commuters

At the time, more than 70% of the work force in Simi Valley, which had 80,000 residents, traveled out of town to earn their livings. Eight years later, 98,000 people live in Simi Valley and 60% of its work force commutes.

“We just cordoned off huge areas,” Stratton said of decisions to set land aside for business development. “Now, we’re discovering that the roads just can’t hack it.”

During the past eight years, more than 386 acres that the city targeted for industrial use have been developed, mostly in the west end, said Bob Hunt, deputy city manager for economic development. About 72 more acres have been approved for development or are under review, Hunt said.

Many of the newcomers have been so-called “labor-intensive” businesses in the high-technology or service industries, Hunt said. For example, nearly 4,000 people work in three companies that moved to Simi Valley in the past five years--Gibraltar Savings, First Interstate Bancard and MICOM Systems, a manufacturer of data communications systems.

Siding with city officials on the traffic issue is the voice of local business, the Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce.

If things don’t improve soon, there will be “other places to go in California, and companies will be attracted to them,” said Nancy Bender, executive director of the chamber. She said, however, that the chamber opposes the ballot measure as “a non-answer.”

Regardless of the slow-growth overtone of traffic concerns, city officials insist that their long-range, broader economic development plans still will follow the course they set in 1980.

Goals Remain

“Our basic policy goals are unchanged for the most part,” senior planner Sam Freed said. “Achieving a balanced community where people can live, work and shop locally remains our objective.”

That ideal is shared by other cities that evolved as bedroom communities of Los Angeles, said Bruce Smith, a long-range planner for Ventura County.

Cities such as Simi Valley, which imposes no property tax on homes and also exempts many businesses, seek commercial and industrial development to raise revenue for services, Smith said.

Commercial development is most desirable because it generates sales taxes, he said, and job growth provides more workers to boost sales-tax revenues by spending their paychecks in town.

Simi Valley’s sales-tax revenue--the city’s largest source of income--increased by 150% since 1980 to about $4.86 million a year, Hunt said. City officials have no projections for how much would be forsaken if the plan to reduce land for industrial development is adopted, he said.

Smith said bedroom communities face a challenge in trying to strike the proper balance between job growth and residents’ concerns.

The Southern California Assn. of Governments, a cooperative of local governments, has targeted 1.2 jobs a household as an ideal for cities. Because households in Simi Valley are relatively large, the city’s Planning Commission recommended 1.8 jobs per household.

If a city goes too far in wooing jobs, Smith said, “it ends up drawing too many people from outside in the form of commuters or new residents,” and that puts added pressure on traffic.

“What has been happening is cities have overestimated the amount of land to set aside for industrial development.”