County on a Collision Course With Gridlock : Traffic: Growth along the Ventura and Simi Valley freeways is a certainty. Transportation improvements are not keeping pace.

There was a time when Westlake resident Ken Bauer could leave home by 6:30 a.m. and expect to arrive at his job in downtown Los Angeles within an hour. But that was in 1976.

Bauer, a personnel manager for Atlantic Richfield Co., now begins his 43-mile commute at 5:30 a.m. to avoid traffic congestion on the Ventura Freeway.

And if state traffic projections are correct, in another 10 years, “I’m going to have to leave home by 4 a.m.,” he said.

Bauer’s time-consuming commute is the result of large housing developments built along the Ventura Freeway between Thousand Oaks and Calabasas during the last 15 years. Those previously rural stretches are now marked by lines of cars that wait morning and evening to get on and off the freeway.

What worries Bauer and other Ventura County commuters is that continued rapid growth is virtually a sure thing not only along the Ventura Freeway but along the Simi Valley Freeway as well. And transportation improvements are lagging far behind.

Ventura County planners say about 43,000 new dwellings will be built in the eastern part of the county over the next 20 years. Los Angeles County planners say about 6,000 new houses have already been approved in the Agoura Hills/Calabasas area and thousands more are proposed. And across the county line from Simi Valley, one of Los Angeles County’s largest business and housing projects was approved last year for the Porter Ranch area.

The state has agreed to pay $33 million to widen the Simi Valley Freeway in Los Angeles County from six to 10 lanes over the next decade to accommodate the massive Porter Ranch development. But money for Simi Valley Freeway improvements in Ventura County was rejected by voters 2 to 1 in November.

Similarly, funds to widen and improve the Ventura Freeway east of Thousand Oaks have been frozen because of tight state and local budgets.

Transportation officials say that means more congestion every year for Ventura County commuters who drive by the tens of thousands into the Los Angeles Basin for work.

Even today, traffic jams on the Simi Valley and Ventura freeways sometimes stretch into this county during morning rush hours, commuters say.

About 138,000 vehicles a day crossed the county line east of Thousand Oaks on the Ventura Freeway in 1990, 172,000 will make the trip each day in the year 2000 and about 199,000 will pass daily in 2010, according to the California Department of Transportation.

At the county line on the Simi Valley Freeway, there were 106,000 freeway trips a day last year and the number will increase to 146,500 in 10 years and to 185,000 in two decades, Caltrans predicts.

“I think it is very clear that if the county is left to rely solely on the resources of the state to construct the projects we need, we can look at Orange County to see what is going to happen to us,” said Ginger Gherardi, executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission.

“It’s going to be bumper-to-bumper traffic into the future,” she said.

Solutions to the increasing traffic problems range from slow-growth strategies to increasing the sales tax in Ventura County to pay for road improvements.

Gherardi insists that growth is inevitable and that failure to improve roadways can only make the problem worse. She and other transportation officials say an additional sales tax--such as the failed half-cent levy on November’s ballot--is needed to solve problems that already exist.

“It’s the old argument: Do freeways cause growth or does growth cause freeways?” said Bill Charbonneau, Caltrans director of construction and maintenance projects in Ventura County. “I personally think freeways are the result of growth.

“What you’re facing out there in Ventura County is people who don’t want any growth,” he added. “They think you can stop growth by stopping transportation. So far, I don’t think that has ever worked.”

Plans are under way to put the sales tax measure back on the ballot in Ventura County, possibly by early next year. Gherardi noted that Orange County voters rejected a similar measure three times before finally approving it last year.

But Bauer, who campaigned against the tax measure, said more money is not the answer to the county’s transportation problems. He said projects financed by the measure would simply open up new areas to development and pass the cost on to taxpayers, rather than to developers.

Bauer, who participates in a company van pool, said ride-sharing programs, mass transit and stricter limits on growth are the only ways to combat traffic congestion.

The Ventura County Environmental Coalition, which wrote the ballot argument against the sales tax measure last fall, took the same position.

“You don’t solve traffic problems, air problems and water problems by building more roads,” Bauer said. “All you’re doing is promoting more growth. I don’t want to subsidize developers.”

Commuters are split on how to best resolve traffic problems that the future is sure to bring.

In Thousand Oaks, where nearly half the work force commutes to Los Angeles County, Planning Commissioner Andy Fox said he favors more freeway construction projects.

“We’ve got to be willing to spend some money so that we don’t get in the same situation that Los Angeles is in,” he said. “Ventura County has the opportunity . . . to keep things manageable.”

Fox commutes each day to downtown Los Angeles, where he is employed as a firefighter.

In Simi Valley, where 60% of workers still drive daily to Los Angeles County, Mayor Greg Stratton opposes putting a transportation tax back on the ballot until other solutions are tried.

Stratton points to a countywide effort to increase van pools and ride-sharing programs.

The county’s air quality district, responding to extremely high ozone levels and federal pressure, is requiring city and county officials to force major employers to create such programs.

Last month, for example, Simi Valley approved plans under which the city will pay its civic center employees $3 a day to car-pool or ride the bus. Department managers have also been authorized to allow flexible work schedules for employees who don’t drive their cars to work.

The city of Thousand Oaks is putting together a similar plan. And the county imposed car-pool restrictions on large businesses last year.

Stratton questions whether traffic congestion will be as bad as forecast because of the car-pool law and growth-control ordinances in all but one of the county’s 10 cities.

Also, Stratton said, Simi Valley will continue to lure businesses to the area in order to reduce the number of commuter trips to Los Angeles.

“I don’t think it’s going to be as bleak as Caltrans would have you believe,” he said.

But Stratton acknowledges that the corrective measures may not be enough to keep the Simi Valley Freeway from one day becoming a virtual parking lot.

“The question is, is it possible to plan our way out of it?” he said. “That’s the challenge.”

Stratton, a manager at Teledyne Systems in Chatsworth, said his weekday commute on the Simi Valley Freeway averages about half an hour. He already hits snags at Tapo Canyon Road and at the Santa Susana Pass during rush hour.

“It’s not good, but it’s not the 405,” he said, referring to the perpetually crowded San Diego Freeway.

Caltrans predicts, however, that the commute of Simi Valley residents will get much worse before it finally gets better as the Simi Valley Freeway is widened in Los Angeles County. For example, at the Woodley Avenue intersection eight miles into Los Angeles County, 179,000 vehicles now pass each day. That figure will be 286,000 in 2010, Caltrans says.

For commuters from Thousand Oaks, prospects are even worse.

Vehicles on the Ventura Freeway near its junction with the San Diego Freeway will jump from 297,000 a day now to 380,000 in 20 years, planners say.

The most heavily traveled freeway in the Los Angeles Basin today is the Santa Monica, which has 341,000 cars a day at its most congested point.

An alternative to freeway commutes has already been approved for the Simi Valley and Moorpark areas. Commuter trains are expected to begin running from Simi Valley to downtown Los Angeles in October, 1992. But about $500,000 a year is needed to operate the new rail service.

The county is expected to get $31 million in state bond money to establish the line. But that money has been earmarked for rail rights of way, passenger cars and maintenance facilities--not for operations.

Gherardi said the $500,000 would have come from the new sales tax. Its defeat set back by 10 years several large transportation projects in the county, she said.

The measure would have enabled the county to claim matching funds available from the state gas tax under Proposition 111 and would have raised another $500 million locally over the next 20 years. County transportation officials estimate that $1.3 billion is needed for local transportation projects.

One project the tax would have financed was the widening of the Simi Valley Freeway from Tapo Canyon Road to the Los Angeles County line. Without the sales tax, the widening from six to eight lanes will not begin for at least 12 years, Gherardi said.

Longer delays are also expected before the Moorpark Freeway is widened from four to six lanes and California 118 between Santa Clara Avenue and Moorpark is expanded from two to four lanes, she said.

There are currently no plans to widen the Ventura Freeway, although county and state transportation officials acknowledge that the freeway is operating at unacceptable levels.

Officials said they are hoping that the 2.2-mile link between the Simi Valley and Moorpark freeways, now under construction, will ease some of the congestion on the Ventura Freeway.

“Maybe we’re going to have to sit and wait until we’re disgusted enough to do something,” Gherardi said.

COMPARING FREEWAY TRAFFIC

Ventura Freeway: Average daily vehicle trips

Checkpoint 1990 2000* 2010* At Fwy. 23 Junct. 161,000 169,329 189,630 At L.A. Co. line 138,000 172,560 198,720

Simi Valley Freeway: Average daily vehicle trips

Checkpoint 1990 2,000* 2010* College View 26,500 69,790 110,500 At Madera Road 56,000 120,554 170,694 At L.A. Co. line 106,000 146,536 185,120

For comparison with figures above, consider: The Santa Monica Freeway, the most heavily traveled in the Los Angeles County Basin, had 341,000 daily vehicle trips at its most congested point in 1990. The San Diego Freeway had 317,000 at its most congested point in 1990.

* Projected

Source: California Dept. of Transportation