Traffic Study of PCH in Lomita Called Badly Flawed

A Lomita citizens group and a state Department of Transportation official they consulted have lambasted a traffic report commissioned by the city to measure the impact of a proposed zoning ordinance on traffic along Pacific Coast Highway.

The city’s study concluded that there would be no significant impact from rezoning. The ordinance is designed to eliminate the current hodgepodge of small retail shops, motels and auto parts stores to create a commercial strip with large retail stores and shopping centers.

Lacks Data

However, Caltrans engineer Karl Berger said the study lacks specific data on the amount of traffic now generated by businesses along the street and how traffic would be affected by the proposed zone change.

“My specific criticism is when you have a traffic study and it has no traffic volume or trip generation (statistics), it’s not a traffic study,” Berger said.

In a written analysis of the study, a residents group called Citizens for a Better Lomita argued that the traffic study makes several crucial errors, including misinterpreting the percentage of trips generated by the existing types of businesses and drawing unsubstantiated conclusions.

Last Tuesday, after an emotional two-hour Planning Commission hearing, the commission unanimously recommended approval of the zoning change to the City Council. The council will consider the ordinance next month.

City officials dismissed criticism of the report, one of two traffic studies commissioned from a Manhattan Beach firm, Planning & Research Associates, the firm of former Lawndale City Manager Paul Philips. The second study concerned traffic at the intersection of Western Avenue and Palos Verdes Drive North. The two reports cost $5,500, city officials said.

The traffic report, city officials argue, was never intended as a detailed traffic study but as a general planning guide to help the city draw up the rezoning ordinance. A moratorium on new development has been in effect on Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita since October, 1987, to give officials time to study the proposed ordinance.

In defending the study, city officials said it provided the general kind of information they were seeking, although some said they had not studied the report thoroughly.

“It seemed OK to me,” said Planning Commissioner Dee Sagers. Sagers said he skimmed the traffic study but “did not really pay that much attention. I didn’t go through the nitty-gritty and see if two plus two equals four and that type of thing.”

Termed ‘Adequate’

“I had no problems with it,” said Commissioner Dave Wilkinson. “It did answer some of the questions the council and planning commission had. For instance, (it projected) the different types of retail (businesses) and the effects they have on traffic.”

Wilkinson called the study adequate, and said a more detailed study would be too expensive. “If you start talking about something like that, you’re talking about big bucks. This is Lomita, not Los Angeles. . . . I didn’t think we needed the damn traffic study.”

“I read it,” City Administrator Walker Ritter said. “I didn’t check everybody’s math or anything like that. . . . We didn’t particularly ask for a traffic study per se. We wanted to know if (the ordinance) would increase traffic, decrease it or keep it the same. It’s not a quantitative type of thing.”

However, a traffic expert consulted by The Times, Martin Wallen of Wallen Associates in Los Angeles, said the study used outdated statistics, misinterpreted some figures and took others “out of context completely.” One table in the 18-page study, for example, used Caltrans figures from a district in San Francisco that were not applicable to how traffic is generated in the Los Angeles-area district, he said. People use cars and other transportation differently in pedestrian-oriented San Francisco than they do in this area, he said.

“It’s not professional work and it shows through,” said Wallen, former traffic engineer for the cities of Long Beach and Richmond. Wallen was given a copy of the report by The Times and asked to comment on it.

Wallen called the study’s conclusion speculative, because it contains no specific figures on how many cars use the mile-long corridor of Pacific Coast Highway to visit certain types of businesses, or a projection of how those figures would be affected by rezoning.

The new ordinance would prohibit or restrict businesses such as car washes, auto repair shops and liquor stores. New hotels and motels would be required to have a minimum of 50 rooms and a restaurant. Commercial lots would have to be at least 100 feet wide, with a minimum of 10,000 square feet.

The new ordinance is intended give the city better control over development on Pacific Coast Highway and to increase the city’s tax base, city officials said.

“It seems that the purpose of the zoning proposal is to gain control over the existing haphazard development in the area rather than to trigger large-scale commercial activity,” the study said. “As such, minimal traffic impacts can be expected to result from this general change.”

Planning Commissioner Chuck Taylor said the city “didn’t want a car count, we didn’t want trip generation figures. My concern was, do larger developments create more traffic, and the answer was no, according to this report.”

Philips of Planning & Research Associates, said he had no comment on allegations of inaccuracy by the citizens group, which he said is trying “to undermine the credibility of the study.”

Approval from the Department of Transportation is not necessary for the city to pass the zoning ordinance, Caltrans and city officials said.