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Congratulations to Times writers Sam Enriquez and Betsy Bates for their informative article on the gridlock traffic problems facing Chatsworth homeowners along Winnetka and Corbin, from Parthenia on the south to Devonshire on the north.

The Times is incorrect, however, when it says Winnetka and Corbin “are the main corridors to get to the Simi Valley Freeway.” As a matter of fact, Winnetka dead-ends at the gated community of Monteria Estates on Devonshire, and Corbin goes only two blocks past Devonshire. Neither street has an on-ramp nor an off-ramp to the freeway.

Winnetka will remain a dead-end street, but Corbin is planned for extension onto the Porter Ranch property that will soon contain 6 million square feet of high-rise buildings, courtesy of Councilman Hal Bernson.

Since neither Winnetka nor Corbin are “main corridors” to the freeway, the gridlocked northbound traffic on Winnetka must turn west and creep to De Soto, while the Corbin traffic must turn east and crawl toward Tampa. This creates even greater traffic snarls on De Soto and Tampa, which actually do lead to the Simi Valley Freeway.

The $37-million, three-story courthouse the county stubbornly intends to build in Chatsworth will be on the southeast corner of Winnetka and Plummer. This corner currently handles 50,047 cars per day, without the courthouse.

Combine this with the minimum 150,602 vehicle trips per day that are guaranteed to be added to the area by Bernson’s Porter Ranch fiasco, and it is easy to see why we in the northwest Valley have a real problem with traffic. The Porter Ranch project is adding 3,395 housing units, 6 million square feet of unneeded office, hotel, and retail space, and 21,358 workers who will travel the jammed freeways and clogged surface streets.

They just can’t possibly all fit on the streets at the same time, or even on the same day.

WALTER N. PRINCE

Northridge