Engineers Advise Against One-Way Street : Ojai: The downtown traffic issue has been debated for decades. The proposal was initially backed by merchants but lost favor.

A Los Angeles traffic engineering firm has recommended against turning Ojai’s most congested roadway into a one-way street, laying temporarily to rest an issue that has dogged the city since the 1960s.

Spurred by requests from area merchants, the Ojai City Council hired DKS Associates in January to study the feasibility of turning the downtown portion of Ojai Avenue--which also serves as California 150--into a one-way street.

That plan would have involved turning a parallel street, probably Matilija, into a second one-way thoroughfare to handle opposing traffic, creating what urban planners call a traffic couplet.

But the concept had few backers Wednesday night when the results of the $30,000 study were presented to the Ojai Planning Commission. Seven possible configurations of the couplet were detailed, and all drew criticism.

“I don’t feel comfortable with the couplet idea,” said commission Chairwoman Marge Fay, echoing the sentiments of the other commissioners. “And I can’t imagine Matilija loaded with cars.”

The study also raised concerns about the number of turns that would be required by the proposal to frame Ojai’s main business district with one-way streets.

First introduced in the early 1960s, the couplet concept had been endorsed by many merchants as a potential boon to downtown businesses, particularly those on the relatively bucolic Matilija Street.

Roadwork in 1989 temporarily diverted Ojai Avenue traffic onto Matilija, leading to increased business for merchants on that street, said Beryl Tognazzini, owner of a restaurant on Matilija.

But once the idea was studied, several major problems were uncovered, said Tognazzini, who served on the study steering committee and was recently appointed to the Ojai redevelopment board.

“In the beginning, I was in favor of the idea,” she said. “But with all those right-angle turns, how can trucks and emergency vehicles get around?”

Other problems include the Matilija roadbed, which is not suited to large trucks, and the encroachment of traffic into residential neighborhoods.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line,” said Ojai Avenue merchant Sal Lucido, who opposed the couplet.

DKS said that instead of turning the streets into one-way throughways, a traffic signal could be installed at the intersection of Montgomery Street and Ojai Avenue, and the roadway could be re-striped with right- and left-turn lanes. That plan, designed to ease congestion without drastically changing the cityscape, was well-received by the commission.

“We knew we needed to deal with the traffic downtown,” said Andrew Belknap, Ojai city manager. “I think the couplet study’s purpose was to deal with the congestion problems, and in that sense it was money well-spent.”

Belknap advised funding the study in 1989 after the city received a petition signed by 100 merchants, asking that the street realignment plan be explored.

Regardless of that initial support, not one merchant defended the proposal at Wednesday’s meeting. “The initial enthusiasm waned when all these other complications came around,” Belknap said.

The study fell short of abandoning the one-way approach entirely. It suggested that a streamlined design may be appropriate at some point in the future.

“We wanted to put this thing to bed,” said Stan Moore, Ojai’s director of public works. “This should pretty well put it down the road a while.”

The Ojai City Council will review a final draft of the study in August and decide whether to take action, Belknap said.