Coordinated Lights on Coast Highway Are Foiled by Crowds

Dear Street Smart:

As a resident of Laguna Beach, I am well aware of the tremendous number of visitors and tourists that come to our wonderful city, especially in the summer, and that of the traffic jams this influx will create. But when the summer is over we still have horrendous traffic jams, especially during commute times. This leads me to two questions.

It seems to me that the traffic lights on Coast Highway downtown are not properly synchronized. Wouldn’t traffic flow much smoother if the four or five lights downtown were better synchronized to allow traffic to flow easier along the road? Once you get past downtown, traffic flows smoothly in either direction.

Second, some genius has decided to widen the highway between Corona del Mar and Laguna, now providing three and maybe four lanes in some areas to bring even more people south into Laguna. Since we can’t handle the current traffic coming in on the two southbound lanes, how are we going to handle the extra traffic? Shouldn’t this have been solved before we spent all the money on widening the highway?

John A. Selecky Laguna Beach Over the years, Street Smart has received several letters about the congestion on Coast Highway in the heart of Laguna Beach. Caltrans officials are aware of it too, but they say signal coordination isn’t the problem.

The traffic signals on the highway in Laguna Beach are coordinated from 7 a.m. to midnight, but other factors affect traffic flow, said Rose Orem, a spokeswoman for Caltrans. A big hindrance is that on average 36,000 cars travel this route daily, a volume that frequently exceeds the road’s capacity, she said.

Another problem is all the drivers wanting to make westbound left turns from side streets like Broadway, Ocean and Forest onto the constantly busy southbound Coast Highway, Orem said. These streets have traffic signals on the highway that are spaced from 264 to 353 feet apart, and that configuration allows for only a few cars on the highway to get through between intersections, she said.

Drivers trying to parallel-park, heavy pedestrian traffic across the busy thoroughfare and drivers who sightsee all delay the traffic, Orem said. For signal coordination to work, all or most of these congestion factors have to be eliminated.

The widening you referred to was paid for by the Irvine Co. to mitigate its development in that area, Orem said. The state’s master plan for the highway calls for six lanes for the entire length, she said.

But downtown areas like Laguna Beach would be hard to widen without taking away the on-street parking, Orem said. There currently are no plans to widen Coast Highway through Laguna Beach, but Caltrans anticipates that when the San Joaquin Hills Corridor opens in 1997 there should be substantial relief, she said.

Dear Street Smart:

On North Bristol Street south of John Wayne Airport, the traffic lights at Birch and Campus are electronically timed. They are timed, however, exactly wrong.

Leaving Birch on a green light puts you at Campus just in time to hit the red. What gives?

Paul Kochendorfer Dana Point Those signal lights have been coordinated to accommodate the heaviest traffic demands during certain times of the day, said Caltrans’ Rose Orem.

During the morning commute, most traffic is headed south toward the business district, so traffic signals are synchronized for a smooth progression through the area, Orem said. In the evening, the signals are changed to accommodate traffic going north.

If you are driving against the commuter flow, it is likely that you will encounter a red light at Campus, Orem said. It goes to the old dictum that not everyone can have a green light.

Your wait at the red light should not be interminable, though. Each signal cycle is 60 seconds long, with a maximum wait of 40 seconds if you hit a red light, Orem said.

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The Orange County Transportation Authority will host a transportation fair Friday through Sunday in the Center Court of Laguna Hills Mall during regular mall hours. Visitors can get information about Orange County’s future construction on Measure M-funded freeway projects such as the El Toro Y reconstruction and see vehicles like OCTA’s SuperBus, which holds twice as many passengers as other buses.

The fair also will provide information on current OCTA services, including buses, Metrolink commuter trains, public transportation for people with disabilities and driver services such as the freeway service patrol and the county’s call box system.