Dear Street Smart:It seems to me that...
Dear Street Smart:
It seems to me that a lot of congestion, and probably some accidents, are caused by a driver’s inability to find street addresses in both business and residential areas. Many places do not show their street numbers at all, and others obscure them so they are very difficult to see.
The law should require that street numbers be clearly visible for all addresses. Or if the law already exists, why isn’t it enforced?
Alan B. Schnitzer, Encino
Dear Reader:
We agree that it can be a frustrating experience trying to find a shop or a house when address numbers either are not posted or are impossible to see. How many of us can claim never to have slowed down in traffic to try to glimpse a street number or to have circled a block several times looking for an address?
As it turns out, however, city code does indeed require shop owners and residents to put up address numbers for passersby to see.
The Department of Public Works issues addresses and mandates posted numerals from four to 12 inches in height and two to six inches in width for all buildings. The numbers, which you can buy ready-made at hardware or home-supply stores, must be posted around--but not on--the front entrance. (Putting the numbers directly on your front door would make it difficult for firefighters and other emergency personnel to see your address if your door is open.)
Those are the rules. Enforcement is another matter.
Nicolino Delli Quadri, a spokesman for the city Department of Building and Safety, says that officials enforce the code during the permit process and construction at a site, but “after the building is up, there really is minimal enforcement unless someone makes a complaint.”
That’s where you come in.
Incidentally, although many residences have their address numbers painted on the curb, there’s nothing requiring that. “That is just something that grew out of people painting numbers on their curb,” Delli Quadri says.
*
Dear Street Smart:
I just spent 15 minutes, from 9:30 to 9:45 a.m., traveling south on Coldwater Canyon Boulevard on the short stretch from the Ventura Freeway to Ventura Boulevard. Unfortunately, I do it every morning with the same results.
The green light at Ventura Boulevard is so short that it allows only four to five southbound cars to go through toward Beverly Hills, thus backing up southbound traffic on Coldwater Canyon.
This did not used to be so. Obviously the traffic division, for reasons unknown, changed the light interval.
What happened?
Stephen J. Howard, Studio City
Dear Reader:
By the time you read this, normalcy, and maybe your sanity, should be restored at that intersection.
City traffic engineer Brian Gallagher tells us that your frustration traces to some experimentation by the city with that signal.
A while back, the city installed a left-turn arrow onto Ventura Boulevard from the northbound Coldwater Canyon side to accommodate a high demand for left turns there during the afternoon peak period.
A business owner in the area then repeatedly asked that the left-turn arrow also operate during the mornings, says Gallagher. “So on a trial basis, we changed the timing to allow the northbound left-turn arrow to also come on during the morning peak. We thought, let’s try it, let’s try to make everyone happy,” he says.
But not everyone was.
Something had to give, which turned out to be 10 seconds taken away from the southbound side of the signal to accommodate the northbound left-turn arrow, which resulted in your long wait.
In the end, traffic engineers went back out to evaluate the new timing and decided that it wasn’t working so well for motorists like you. So the morning left-turn arrow for northbound drivers no longer exists, and your morning commute should have reverted by now to the way it used to be.
