Patience at Signals Will Help Motorists See the Lights

Dear Street Smart:

Is there a sensible reason for the lengthy delay in the changing of signals from red to green at Victoria Avenue and Moon Drive in Ventura?

Northbound Victoria traffic has a long wait for the green because of the southbound left-turning traffic onto Moon.

The light stays red even when there are no more left-turning vehicles.

The same problem exists at Telephone and Portola roads and doubtless other locations. Why the delay?

R. D. Hopton

Ventura

Dear Reader:

If you endure the wait at Victoria and Moon, your patience will be rewarded with an abundance of green lights down the road. So says Ventura traffic engineer Nazir Lalani.

Motorists are made to suffer through long lights at that intersection and at Telephone and Portola, he says, for the greater good of synchronization.

If the light turned green even an instant earlier, you would find yourself jamming on the brakes at the very next intersection, stuck at another red light.

Currently, once you get through that first long wait, the lights are timed to let you glide down the road without stopping.

Dear Street Smart:

In your Feb. 7 column, a gentleman wrote asking why people do not use the bicycle lane when they are turning right.

The city engineer for Thousand Oaks said it is legal to enter the bike lane to turn. Since I am a new resident of California, I was required to take a written California drivers test.

In preparation for the test, I read the manual, which states that a driver is not allowed to enter the bicycle lane any sooner than 200 feet from the corner.

Isn’t this contrary to what you wrote?

Please clear up this confusion for me and your other readers.

Marilyn Sewell

Camarillo

Dear Reader:

You, the city engineer and the state’s rules-of-the-road manual agree that drivers are allowed to enter the bike lane to turn right.

Drivers are not, however, allowed to cruise the bike lane indiscriminately. The bike lane should be used only when making a right turn.

Dear Street Smart:

I live in Moorpark and occasionally drive down to The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks for a little shopping. I have no problem finding my way there. The problem is getting out of the mall and back onto the freeway to get home.

There are only a few exits out of the mall and no signs indicating where to go to find the on-ramp to the Ventura Freeway. I don’t go there often enough to know by heart how to do it. Several times I’ve ended up driving the wrong way for several blocks trying to figure out how to get home.

Could signs be posted at the mall to show the way to the freeway?

Hazel Williams

Moorpark

Dear Reader:

It’s possible that signs could be posted, but only if it won’t clutter the roadway, Thousand Oaks traffic engineer John Helliwell says.

Directional signs need to be kept to a minimum, otherwise they can block views of the road, Helliwell says.

And besides, he says, “most motorists don’t like to see too many signs because they are not attractive.” Signs are posted near the mall on eastbound Hillcrest Drive near Moorpark Road and on westbound Hillcrest Drive near Lynn Road, Helliwell says. But there are none at the mall. The city will check to see if it can add a few.