Weight Problem Makes Highway a Tight Squeeze : Moorpark: Truck traffic has outgrown California 118, but officials are at odds over a solution.

California Highway Patrol and Moorpark officials agree that truck traffic on California 118 is more than the narrow two-lane highway can handle. But they can’t agree on what to do about it.

Some city officials say that a large percentage of the more than 1,200 truckers who use the highway on a daily basis do so to avoid the Conejo Weigh Station on the Ventura Freeway.

If the California Highway Patrol replaced its temporary weigh station on California 118 near Moorpark with a permanent facility, they say, more trucks would be directed back onto the Ventura Freeway and safety would be improved.

Last year, there were 107 vehicle accidents on the highway between Moorpark and Saticoy, 25 involving trucks, according to the California Highway Patrol. So far this year, there have been 33 accidents on the same stretch of highway, which accommodates more than 5,100 vehicles a day. The CHP could not provide a statistic on how many of those accidents involved trucks.

However, one of two traffic fatalities that have occurred on the highway this year involved the collision of two trucks near Somis. The other accident involved a bicyclist who was struck by a car and killed. There were no traffic fatalities reported on the highway last year.

“It’s just a bad stretch of highway,” said Moorpark City Councilman Clint Harper. “It was never meant to handle that kind of traffic.”

Harper said he has been a strong supporter of a permanent weigh station near the city as a way to alleviate some of the truck traffic.

“A new truck scale facility would help tremendously,” Harper said. “We’ve offered to even purchase the land for the scales.”

As it is, the temporary station just east of Grimes Canyon Road is open only periodically because of a personnel shortage, said Lt. Claude LeMond of the California Highway Patrol. And when the facility is open, LeMond said, inspectors are limited to the number of trucks they can pull over--seven to 10 a day--because there is no place for the vehicles to park.

“We can’t be having trucks stop in the middle of the roadway,” LeMond said.

While LeMond said he would like to see a 16-hour inspection facility operating on both sides of the highway, he has mixed feelings about how much truck traffic it would actually reduce. He said a lot of the trucks now using the roadway serve many of the businesses in the area.

“There’s a lot of agriculture out there,” LeMond said, referring to the numerous fruit and vegetable farms along California 118, “and all the agriculture is dependent upon the trucks.”

But Harper, who said one of his campaign promises to Moorpark residents was to get a permanent weigh station built at the west end of the city, has a different opinion.

“I don’t buy that all of that truck traffic is predominantly from local agriculture,” Harper said. “I drive that route every day, and I look at the license plates of these trucks. We’re getting a lot of interstate truck traffic.”

The highway is the main road running through Moorpark, and as a result, the city is often the site of truck accidents and spills, Harper said.

“When an accident occurs, it shuts the entire highway down in both directions,” causing major traffic tie-ups in the city, he said. “These are some of the problems you have when your city is built on a state highway.”

Harper said Moorpark is paying to have some sections of the highway widened to better handle the trucks. But such projects are only “Band-Aids on a major problem,” he said.

Harper said the City Council has sent a series of letters to Caltrans with its offer to purchase land for a permanent truck scale facility outside the city. However, he said, the state recently updated its master plan of future truck scale sites, and Moorpark is not on it.

Jerry Baxter, Caltrans district director, said his agency conducted a survey of truck traffic on the highway two years ago and found that much of it was generated by local businesses, most of which were located west of Moorpark. He said only a small number of trucks were using the highway to bypass the Conejo Weigh Station.

Baxter, however, said that California 118 is heavily traveled and that the ultimate solution would be to widen it to four lanes. Connecting the Simi Valley and Moorpark freeways would also help, he said.

The problem is that both of these roadway projects are contingent upon passage of Proposition 111, a June ballot measure that would raise the state gasoline tax to pay for highway improvements. And even if the measure were to pass, state transportation officials said, it could be years before the highway is widened.

Meanwhile, Harper said, Moorpark residents continue to voice their frustration to him about the number of trucks passing through their city.

“I get calls about it all the time,” Harper said. “People say, ‘Why don’t you keep the trucks out of town?’ and I say, ‘I would, if I could.’ ”

Harper said the Moorpark City Council will keep pushing Caltrans for a permanent weigh station. He said he plans to bring up the issue again at Wednesday’s council meeting.

“In the meantime, the trucks will continue to rumble through Moorpark with our black and whites close behind,” he said.