Council OKs $5.5-Million Plan to Cut Warner Center Traffic

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved a $5.5-million traffic-improvement plan for Warner Center that includes synchronizing traffic lights and buying shuttle buses to serve the burgeoning West San Fernando Valley.

The improvements, proposed by Councilwoman Joy Picus, will be financed by $5.5 million paid into a trust fund by developer Robert Voit in return for city approval of his two high-rise buildings under construction in Warner Center.

“The significant feature of the trust fund is that for the first time, a developer of existing office buildings is being held responsible for reducing the traffic generated by his developments,” said Picus, who has been criticized by her opponents in the April 11 election for failing to reduce the traffic generated by development.

Among the improvements is installation by the end of 1990 of high-tech traffic lights. The Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System uses a computer to monitor traffic through intersections and automatically changes green and red lights according to traffic flow. Sensors embedded in streets send traffic information to the computer over telephone lines.

The system was successfully introduced during the 1984 Olympics to guide traffic around the Coliseum and was recently put into effect on Ventura Boulevard in the West Valley to relieve congestion caused by widening of the Ventura Freeway.

Also planned is the purchase of buses to transport employees between their homes in outlying areas and Warner Center. The buses will be used during working hours to shuttle residents, shoppers and workers around Warner Center for 25 cents a ride. A “ride-sharing coordinator” to encourage Warner Center’s 25,000 employees to car-pool is also planned.

“For a number of years, the city’s policy has been to require developers of future buildings to pay to relieve the traffic their projects are expected to cause,” Picus said. “Such payments by future developers in Warner Center will go into the trust fund, so there will be an ongoing source of revenue to continue and expand traffic-reduction programs.”