Traffic Expected to Be Key to Massive Housing Project : Moorpark: Up to 3,200 proposed homes may hinge on linking the area to the rest of the city. Plan may also be used to ease existing congestion.

As the design of a massive housing project that may eventually bring Moorpark up to 3,200 new homes begins to take shape, City Council members and the developer agree that one of their most complicated and significant battles may be waged over pavement:

Specifically, how to best link the 4,000 acres owned by Messenger Investment Co. to the rest of the city, and how to use the development to remove as much traffic as possible from existing city streets.

“The most complex aspect of this project is turning out to be the roads,” Messenger Vice President Gary Austin said. “Because what they’re going to try to do is fix some of the other regional transportation problems through this project.”

And while the developer seeks to avoid assuming traffic--particularly truck traffic--that now winds its way through downtown Moorpark, city officials are sure to demand that Messenger play some role in reducing the heavy flow on existing streets.

Councilman Bernardo Perez said Austin as much as promised that Messenger would assume some of that traffic when the company successfully lobbied to be included in the city’s 1992 update of its General Plan.

“There was a certain expectation that I now have based on their representations, and I think the community at large shares that expectation,” Perez said. “If he is true to his word, then I expect that he is willing to contribute 100% to helping solve the problem.”

But with Messenger’s strong desire to keep trucks off the main road that will traverse its property, defining the extent of the developer’s contribution may be problematic.

“What we’re saying is that, after looking at the topography and the character of the community that we’re designing, we don’t think it would be a good idea to make that road a truck route,” Austin said.

“Even if the city decides that it has to have that as a truck route--and it can certainly make that decision--we think that the people who would move into the houses in the first phase of development would immediately go down to City Hall and ask them to change that designation.”

City officials say they are faced with two main challenges as they begin to consider the Messenger road system: how best to design the major east-west corridor that will run across the land, and how extensively to link the development to the existing Campus Park neighborhood to the south.

“We face an important dichotomy in that we don’t want to increase traffic through those areas by linking them up with Messenger,” Councilman Scott Montgomery said. “But, on the other hand, we’re looking to Messenger to provide additional benefits--commercial development, schools, a police substation and a fire station--and they’re not going to do any good if people can’t get to them.”

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Messenger officials last week submitted their first draft specific plan for the project, which shows a major east-west roadway running from Broadway east through their project and heading south to link up with the Simi Valley Freeway at a planned interchange east of Collins Drive and west of Alamos Canyon Road. The plan also shows three connections between the Messenger land and the existing Campus Park neighborhood.

But it is still early in the planning process, city officials and representatives of the developer say, and those initial plans could be substantially altered on the way to city approvals.

One change that Messenger may explore, Austin said, is using the existing Collins Drive interchange to provide a freeway link for the new homes, allowing the developer to save the $6 million to $10 million it would have cost to build the new interchange.

Austin said a preliminary traffic study indicates that Collins--with some improvements--could handle the additional traffic generated by up to 3,200 new homes, and that avoiding construction of a new interchange would allow Messenger to commit those funds to the city for another road improvement project.

“It’s a way for the city to take some dollars that might have been allocated in one spot and put them in another spot,” Austin said. “All of these things are kind of in a big bubble in everybody’s head and they’re all saying, ‘Hmm.’ ”

The most logical target for the funds, he said, would probably be a westward expansion of the Simi Valley Freeway to Walnut Canyon Road, which would provide freeway truck access through the city and take the burden off surface streets.

The major question Moorpark officials would face is whether the state Department of Transportation would agree to fund such a freeway expansion soon, even with up to $10 million from the city.

Given the long delays in the construction of the connector of the Simi Valley-Moorpark freeways and all the recent earthquake-related freeway damage now vying for state funds, council members may be unwilling to take that gamble.

“I just don’t see Caltrans coming up with the money to do that when there’s so much needed to be done, retrofitting and other things, as a result of the earthquake,” Montgomery said. “I’d be thrilled, but I’m not really expecting that to happen.”

Perez said he also was doubtful that the city would see such a project funded in the near future. Even if a freeway extension were approved, Perez wondered whether the city could accept the heavier traffic burden on Collins.

“We hear complaints from residents about drivers using that as an expressway now,” he said. “Just north of the freeway, we have the college, Campus Canyon School, a park--you would have a lot of users converging in that area. Maybe the numbers work, but in practice, is that something that we want to see?”