Traffic Can Be Taxing : New Assessment District May Fund Oxnard’s Road Improvements

At the opening of Ventura County’s first Wal-Mart last month, Oxnard resident Laura Browner showed up early, grabbed a shiny shopping cart and eagerly sped down the wide aisles, vowing this would be the first of many trips to the nation’s largest retailer.

Less than a month later, Browner says she has lost her enthusiasm for visiting the sprawling mega-store, located in a new Oxnard shopping center called Shopping at the Rose.

The reason, she said, is the traffic bottleneck at the Ventura Freeway’s Rose Avenue exit, the route she takes to get to the store.

“That exit is so bad we call it the ramp from hell,” Browner said. “The traffic has gotten so slow, you sit there forever. It’s just not worth it.”

A road-widening project scheduled for completion this week may ease traffic troubles on Oxnard’s most congested freeway ramp, but traffic planners say the project is a short-term fix.

What the 36-year-old interchange really needs, city officials say, is an $18-million overhaul. The city hopes to pay for the project, planned for 1997, by forming an assessment district.

A special tax would be levied on businesses and residents throughout much of the city to raise $77 million for Rose Avenue and two other road improvement projects.

“Everyone agrees that we need these improvements,” said Oxnard Finance Director Rudy Muravez. “It’s just a matter of figuring out how to pay for them.”

In recent years, the amount of traffic snaking from the single-lane Rose Avenue exit ramp to the stop sign at its southern base has dramatically increased as motorists travel to the new location of St. John’s Regional Medical Center on Gonzales Road and an auto mall near Via del Norte.

Last month’s opening of the Shopping at the Rose center has compounded the problem, causing traffic to back up onto the freeway occasionally.

To address the problem, Oxnard recently spent $400,000 collected from area developers to pay for short-term improvements, which include widening Rose Avenue and adding a traffic signal on the south exit ramp.

“Once the mall opened, we saw we had a problem,” said Oxnard’s design engineering manager, Bob Weithofer. “We realized we had to go forward with this.”

When the project is completed, an obstacle course of traffic cones now marking the roadway will be replaced with freshly painted lanes that will guide motorists more smoothly to their destinations, Weithofer said.

“The goal here is to keep traffic going at a reasonable pace,” Weithofer said.

But city officials agree that the improvements are not expected to keep up with traffic increases.

Citing one example of the city’s desire to overhaul the interchange soon, Oxnard traffic engineer Joe Genovese said that cheaper and less durable concrete normally found in sidewalks and curbs was used for the recent roadwork.

“It isn’t up to standard, but we wanted to cut costs and we’re hoping it’s not going to be too long before the whole thing is replaced anyway,” Genovese said.

To pay for the major overhaul, Oxnard officials are devising a plan to assess all residents and businesses north of Wooley Road.

The first phase of the assessment plan will target about 1,100 businesses and homeowners who built after 1985, Finance Director Muravez said. The theory is that after 1985, traffic flow surpassed the roads’ capacity.

The assessment district plan would cover the $18-million cost of the Rose Avenue overhaul, plus Oxnard’s $59-million share of two other projects: reconstruction of the Rice Avenue interchange and a complete make-over for the Ventura Freeway-Pacific Coast Highway connector.

Caltrans and the city of Ventura are picking up an additional $43 million in construction costs for the projects.

But some Oxnard residents have complained that the district unfairly singles them out, when consumers throughout the region patronize shops and services in the area.

Oxnard resident Walter Billin, 64, said all motorists using the roadways should share the cost.

“The city has brought in all these very large stores like Wal-Mart that attract people from outside the area who get the benefit of the improved road, but we have to pay for it,” the retired aerospace electronics manager said. “Where is the fairness in that?”

Muravez said the first draft of the assessment plan will be presented to the Oxnard City Council in about three months. Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said he would consider exempting homeowners from the assessment district. Assessments levied against homeowners are expected to bring in about 2% of the total cost of the projects.

“It’s too soon to make any decisions until we see the staff report,” Lopez said. “But people are under a lot of financial stress right now, so I’m sure we’ll consider that option.”

In the meantime, city officials said they will continue to seek alternative revenue sources, to reduce the cost of the assessment district to residents and businesses.

“We’re always looking for other funding sources,” Genovese said, “but it doesn’t look too good right now.”