Incompatible Signals Create Bottleneck

Dear Street Smart:

There is a traffic snafu on Paularino Avenue and Bear Street just north of the Corona del Mar Freeway in Costa Mesa.

When the left-turn light on Paularino westbound turns green to allow traffic to head south onto Bear, a signal light just a hundred or so feet down Bear turns red. This light controls traffic getting onto and off the northbound Corona del Mar Freeway.

The result of the behavior by these two lights is that traffic backs up to Paularino, creating a real gridlock situation. I think if they synchronized the lights a little better, we wouldn’t have these problems.

Dan Niemiec

Huntington Beach

The trouble here is just a simple lack of communication--between some traffic signals.

That turn signal at Paularino Avenue is controlled by the city of Costa Mesa. The uncooperative signal light that meters traffic at the intersection of Bear Street and the freeway’s on- and off-ramps is the property of the California Department of Transportation.

William Morris, Costa Mesa director of public services, said the switching mechanisms at the two intersections are not mechanically compatible. The result is a situation where the signals “do not talk that well with each other,” he said, producing a synchronization problem and the daily gridlock.

There’s hope. Morris said plans are in the works to upgrade the Caltrans signal so it will work better with the light at Paularino Avenue. However, the new signal, which may cost as much as $20,000, is “a good year away,” he said.

Dear Street Smart:

In February, I was pulled over and issued a citation. The law I violated was one prohibiting altered license plates. What I had done was put a hyphen between the characters, thus altering my personalized license plates from their original form.

I corrected the problem by removing the hyphen and went to the nearest police station to have this citation signed off. The police told me that I would have to appear in court and that they could not just sign this type of violation off.

I am employed as a paralegal, and as such I went to work to find what this certain code section entailed. Much to my amazement, this violation is punishable as a misdemeanor and, at times, as a felony--what the courts call a “wobbler.”

At my arraignment, the judge refused to dismiss the violation, leaving me little choice but to plead not guilty to this violation. To make a long story short, I was finally able to have this case dismissed in the interest of justice.

Now, I know some of your readers are also in violation of the vehicle code section. I see license plates in the likes of “TOM’S CAR” and “MR. BIG” with punctuation marks painted or otherwise placed on the plates.

The moral of my story is this: Never alter your license plates in any way, shape or form. What I thought to be an infraction turned out to be more than I bargained for. So unless your readers are prepared to sit countless hours in a courtroom, miss untold hours of work and possibly be threatened with the thought of jail if the judge doesn’t like you, they should never, never alter their license plates.

Larry H. Corbett Jr.

Huntington Beach

You certainly know your license plate law.

And any motorists who think they can get away with a slyly placed hyphen or comma better think twice. Last year, the California Highway Patrol issued 205 tickets to motorists in the state for altered license plates, said Steve Kohler, an agency spokesman. That doesn’t even include the tickets issued by the various municipal police forces around the state.

There is, of course, a reason for the law. “It’s a legibility matter,” said Kohler. “It could confuse someone if a car is involved in a hit-and-run accident or some other type of incident in which the vehicle needed to be identified.”