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Radar Trap: Speed Limits Often Rise After Surveys : Torrance: Residents want rules enforced, but police can only use radar devices on streets that have up-to-date traffic surveys. Those surveys can actually raise speeds. Residents don’t want that.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Not so long ago, it was difficult to drive through Torrance without spotting at least one police officer checking traffic speeds by radar.

They were there on Anza Avenue, Calle Mayor and Palos Verdes Boulevard with efficient regularity, pointing their bulky radar guns at wary drivers. Occasionally officers lay in wait on Lomita Boulevard, Pacific Coast Highway, Madrona and Prairie avenues.

Not anymore.

Torrance police now are hard-pressed to find a major street where they can use their radar units. Mandatory traffic speed surveys for many of the city’s most-used arteries have expired--some as long as two years ago--making it illegal for police to use radar to issue speeding tickets.

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Although officers still ticket speeders using other methods, including making an educated estimate of speed and attempting to pace cars as they race away, the increasing number of streets where radar use is forbidden is creating a headache for police.

“Of course we’re frustrated,” said Lt. Dennis Frandsen, head of the department’s traffic division. “Radar is simply a tool, but it’s the best tool we have. It’s an uphill battle when they take away the tools that we need to do our job well.”

Police and city officials, who are responsible for making sure the surveys are kept up-to-date, agree that the problem has been festering for years.

Under state laws that date from the 1960s, cities wanting to conduct radar enforcement on their major arteries--generally those wider than 40 feet--must survey them every five years to determine current traffic conditions and prevailing speeds.

In order to allow radar enforcement, speed limits for those streets must be set according to how fast 85% of the motorists are driving.

City officials may set a lower speed limit only if there are significant considerations, such as a blind curve or a nearby school, that call for a slower speed limit.

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“The philosophy behind this . . . is that 85% of the people will not drive faster than is safe,” Frandsen said. “It’s sort of like letting people vote on the speed limit (that) should be set.”

Although smaller neighborhood streets are exempt from the survey requirements, any radar tickets issued on major roads that do not have an up-to-date survey must be dismissed, Torrance Municipal Court Commissioner Harlan Swain said.

For the most part, traffic officers do not make the mistake of using radar where it is not allowed, he said.

“We haven’t had any big rash of dismissals,” he said. “That doesn’t seem to be a problem.”

Officials for some of the smaller South Bay cities said they conduct surveys on all their streets every four or five years, changing speed limits as required and maintaining radar enforcement without interruption. Some larger cities, such as Redondo Beach, conduct one-quarter of their surveys each year, staggering the workload.

Speed limit changes are made without much comment from residents, officials in other cities said.

In Torrance, however, residences have been built along more than half the major arteries, creating a resident population of activists determined to keep speeds down.

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When city officials have attempted to increase speed limits to meet survey requirements, residents have fought the changes.

So when a consultant turned in new surveys for the entire city early last year that called for speed limit increases on a number of streets, officials sent the surveys back and asked the consultant to find mitigating factors that could keep the limits down, city traffic manager John Vance said.

Since then, city employees have begun conducting surveys themselves.

“The rules are very stringent and don’t leave a whole lot of flexibility . . . but we’re trying to see what we can do to make everybody comfortable with the situation,” Vance said. “Before we subject ourselves and the City Council to this, we want to look at everything and make sure an increase is the sole recommendation we can make.”

A key problem, Frandsen said, is the public’s perception that raising a speed limit means that drivers are going to travel faster than they already do.

“People feel that if you make a higher speed limit, you’re going to increase the speeds on the street, but studies have shown that is not true,” Frandsen said. “The public doesn’t understand the process well enough. We can try to explain it, but . . . when you get emotions involved in it, it just doesn’t work.”

Frandsen said a good way to resolve the confusion caused by the survey laws would be to change them so that speed limits remain the same unless circumstances on the streets change.

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“One of the things that has made our system work is voluntary compliance, and there is far less voluntary compliance than many years ago,” he said. “I think that calls into question this whole philosophy of allowing people to vote on their speed limits.”

Although residents want radar enforcement on their streets, they say they do not want the speed limit increases required to do it.

The last time Anza Avenue was surveyed in 1984, residents living along the southern half of the street were appalled when city officials told them that the speed limit would have to be increased from 25 to 30 m.p.h. to continue radar enforcement.

After several months of heated argument, residents said they would stop fighting the change if the city agreed to conduct strict radar enforcement of the new speed, said Frank Rizzardi, president of Southwood Riviera Homeowners Assn.

Last year, however, that survey expired and a new one said the limit now should be raised to 35 m.p.h.

“I’m afraid if they raise it to 35, they’re not going to carry out the strict radar enforcement,” Rizzardi said. “I’m afraid they’re going to let people think they can go five or 10 miles an hour over that. Anza already is like a speedway.”

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Residents on other streets recommended for speed limit increases said cars were clocked at higher speeds during the survey because the old speed limits were not enforced strictly enough.

“There are times when I’m almost rear-ended pulling into my driveway when I’m slowing down and all these speed demons behind me want to go their 45 or 50 or 55 miles an hour,” said Pam O’Brien, who lives on Sepulveda Boulevard between Anza and Palos Verdes Boulevard. Last year’s survey called for increasing the limit on that street from 40 to 45 m.p.h.

“There is no justification at all to impose a higher speed limit on the residents who live there,” O’Brien said.

Jerry Snyder, a retired commander of the Police Department’s traffic division who now sits on the Torrance Traffic Commission, said he has asked staff to explain why new surveys have not been approved.

That discussion is scheduled to take place at the commission’s next meeting on Sept. 17.

“I know the frustrated policemen who can’t work radar,” Snyder said. “And I understand that when you have seven people on the council and you have a lot of people screaming bloody murder that they don’t want the speed limits raised that the council is going to listen.

“But the Police Department’s hands are tied if they can’t work radar,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to get behind a car in a black-and-white with gum-ball machines on top and then try to pace a speeder without them noticing. . . . How are the police supposed to do their job?”

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LIMITS ON RADAR ENFORCEMENT

Major streets that cannot be radar-enforced, either because their surveys have expired or their speed limits have not been changed to match the survey: * Anza Avenue * Arlington Avenue, between Sepulveda Boulevard and Carson Street * Calle Mayor * Carson Street, between Anza and Western avenues * Crenshaw Boulevard, north of Torrance Boulevard * Del Amo Boulevard, between Anza Avenue and Madrona/Prairie and between Crenshaw and Western Avenue * Hawthorne Boulevard, between Sepulveda and Torrance boulevards and between 190th Street and Artesia Boulevard * Lomita Boulevard * Madrona Avenue * Pacific Coast Highway, east of Calle Mayor * Palos Verdes Boulevard within the Torrance city boundaries * Prairie Avenue, between Del Amo Boulevard and 182nd Street * Western Avenue * 182nd Street

Major streets that can be radar-enforced: * Artesia Boulevard * Carson Street, between Palos Verdes Boulevard and Anza Avenue * Crenshaw Boulevard south of Torrance Boulevard * Del Amo Boulevard west of Anza Avenue * Hawthorne Boulevard, between Newton Street and Sepulveda Boulevard and between Torrance Boulevard and 190th Street * Maple/235th Street, between Crenshaw Boulevard and Carson Street * Pacific Coast Highway, between Palos Verdes Boulevard and Calle Mayor * Prairie Avenue north of 182nd Street * Sepulveda Boulevard * Torrance Boulevard * Van Ness Avenue, north of Carson Street * 190th Street

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