Angry Motorists See Neighborhood Street Detours as No Barriers : Burbank: Some drivers have apparently flattened barricades set up to reduce traffic in Toluca Lake. But the city says the three-month experiment will continue.

The barriers are coming down in Burbank--not to the blast of trumpets, but to the blare of car horns.

Temporary street barricades set up in January to reduce shortcut traffic in the tony neighborhoods of Toluca Lake have been flattened by hit-and-run crashes, apparently the work of motorists angered by the detours the barricades create, officials said.

But despite the barrier-busters, hundreds of complaints about them, and the expense of erecting new barricades, Burbank officials intend to persevere with the three-month experiment.

Crews have had to replace most of the seven wooden barricades 12 times since they were installed, Howard Jones, senior assistant traffic engineer, said. The frequency of attacks on the plywood barricades is reflective of the hostility merchants and residents feel toward them.

Betty Belyea, Bank of America branch manager, said more than 100 customers have complained that the barriers on Olive Avenue have made the bank too difficult to reach. She said about 15 customers have threatened to withdraw their accounts if the barricades aren’t removed.

Drivers not only crash through the 20-inch-high barricades, they drive around them via the driveways and front lawns of houses, officials said. Motorists are also maneuvering through alleys to avoid the barriers.

“It’s becoming a real pain,” Jones said. “The calls are running 99 to 1 against the barricades. We’re getting hundreds of calls. And it’s a real bother replacing them.”

It costs $350 each to install the barricades, and $100 each to replace them. Police have been unable to catch those responsible, who would be cited for vandalizing public property and ordered to pay for the repair, officials said.

Despite resentment among motorists and some city bureaucrats, the barricades will not be taken down, City Manager Bud Ovrom said. They were installed as an experiment to end commuter shortcuts through a residential area near the Media District, which is dominated by the headquarters for several motion picture and television studios.

With more than two months left in the trial run, “it’s way too early to declare this a failure,” Ovrom said.

The low-standing barricades are designed to break when hit by a car so that police and emergency vehicles can pass through them. Higher barricades were initially installed, but were blamed for hampering a police pursuit of an armed robbery suspect Jan. 3. The barriers were subsequently lowered to the same height of a police car’s bumper guard.

Many residents in the area had complained for years that their quiet streets had become dangerous thoroughfares with overflow traffic from busy Riverside Drive or Olive Avenue, the main streets leading into the Media District. They said their children and pets were endangered by the fast-moving cars.

To prevent motorists from using the shortcuts, six east-west streets paralleling Riverside Drive to the southeast were blocked, along with Rose Street, near the entrance of the Lakeside Country Club.

But the barricades seem to have spurred more drive-time fever than praise from some residents. Betty Stewart, a Toluca Lake resident for 42 years, said she found the barriers “outrageous.

“It takes me 12 blocks out of the way just to get around the corner,” Stewart said. “Here we are in a free country, and there are barriers all around. In Germany, they’re taking all the barriers down. What is going on here ?”

Marlys Cleland, operations manager for an advertising firm in the area, said she and her customers found the blockades “completely unreasonable. Now the busy streets are twice as congested. It’s taking people 10 to 15 minutes longer to get to work. Everyone we talk to is absolutely upset.”