Routes Needed Over Encino Hills

I am writing to refute the misrepresentation and misinformation in the letter “Paving Over Isn’t Answer” by Bill Crane of the Sierra Club.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation has not informed the Encino Hillside Traffic Safety Organization, of which I am president, that “opening up new routes for traffic alleviates a situation for a maximum of about two years.” Rather, the Department of Transportation has recommended multiple cross-mountain routes--including a connection of Reseda Boulevard with a paved Mulholland Drive--as the only viable solution to the traffic problems in the Encino hills.

This conclusion was the result of a Department of Transportation in-depth study of traffic in the Encino hills 11 years ago when the traffic conditions were serious but not as horrendous as they now are. The Southern California Assn. of Governments has also recommended the connection of Reseda Boulevard to a paved Mulholland Drive as one of several solutions to relieve the traffic congestion.

Yet our Councilman Marvin Braude and our City Council have done nothing to act on the recommendations of these costly studies, even though they know that the highway traffic on the narrow, steep and winding Encino hillside streets poses danger to the residents and their property.

Crane is again incorrect when he says that paving of Mulholland Drive will stimulate development in the Santa Monica Mountains. The three-mile strip from Reseda Boulevard to Encino Hills Drive that the Encino Hillside Traffic Safety Organization wants paved is in an area that is almost totally owned by the federal, state and county governments, so that private development is impossible.

The West Valley is developing regardless of the availability of roads, and the existing phenomenal growth is taxing existing roads beyond endurance. A cross-mountain route in the West Valley to accommodate the growth in the West Valley is only fair and necessary.

Crane seems to be touting the new rhetoric of the so-called environmentalists, who profess sympathy with the traffic plight in Encino yet vigorously fight remedies for its solution in order to preserve their own agenda. Those truly concerned with the environment know that idling cars damage the environment more significantly than paving a three-mile strip on Mulholland Drive.

MADELINE DeANTONIO, Encino