Parking at This Shopping Center Is No Bed of Roses

Dear Street Smart:

I have a concern about the traffic flow through the parking lot at the Shopping at the Rose center in Oxnard.

The way it’s configured, when you’re driving through there, cars are crossing all over the place. They have barriers that stop traffic at strange places, and long lines at the entrances and exits.

They definitely should have planned it a little better or included a few more stop signs.

Are there any plans to upgrade that parking lot?

I know they are building another shopping center across the street. I hope they do a better job with that one.

Sue Walea, Oxnard

Dear Reader:

You’ll get no argument from Oxnard city officials, who agree that the Shopping at the Rose parking lot is a mess.

City Planner Matt Winegar said he recently sent a letter to developers of the shopping complex, requesting that they make a number of improvements, including restriping the pavement, installing more stop signs and even building some new medians.

“We hope the stop signs and pavement markings happen immediately--within 30 or 45 days,” Winegar said. “The medians could take a little longer.”

As for Shopping at the Rose II--the first phase of which will open before Christmas--planners are studying the parking plans a lot more closely, Winegar said.

“We don’t expect the same sort of situation to happen again,” he said.

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Dear Street Smart:

I ride a motorcycle and have a question about a situation that is very troubling to me.

Some of the traffic signals don’t activate when I pull up to the red light to make a left-hand turn.

It seems like the motorcycle is not heavy enough to trigger the sensor, so a lot of times I have to wait until a car comes up behind me, or simply run the red light when there’s no traffic.

Why is it that motorcycles so often fail to trigger the traffic signals at left-turn-only lanes?

Mark Lienhard, Simi Valley

Dear Reader:

The situation you describe is not uncommon.

Simi Valley Traffic Engineer Bill Golubics said he receives this complaint now and then. But he doesn’t mind when he does.

Indeed, the city’s traffic lights are equipped with sensors underneath the street that alert the signal that someone is waiting. They trigger the signal when a certain weight is exceeded, and often a motorcycle is not heavy enough to activate the system, Golubics said.

The good news is that the gizmos are adjustable.

“Occasionally, our sensors lose their sensitivity and we need to make field adjustments to our equipment,” Golubics said. “Our staff welcomes those complaints because we don’t know they’re happening until we do.”

So if you cite a specific intersection, Simi Valley traffic engineers say they will study the intersection and adjust the sensor accordingly.

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Dear Street Smart:

I drive the Ventura Freeway to and from work every day.

Too often on weekday mornings, I see those Caltrans crews cleaning the roadside with their bright orange trucks parked along the side of the road and getting in people’s way.

Why don’t they do that kind of work at night or later during the day, when there’s a lot fewer cars on the freeway? It backs up the traffic for miles and miles, and it can’t be very safe.

Pejman Jadidi, Thousand Oaks

Dear Reader:

State Department of Transportation maintenance officials are intimately familiar with this complaint. Regional Manager Dave Servaes said: “This issue has been discussed and discussed and discussed.”

Problem is, Servaes says, it costs too much money for the crews to work on routine landscaping and maintenance projects after normal working hours.

What’s more, the hazards to his employees are much greater when they plant and maintain the roadsides after dark, he said.

“We try to take care of a lot of projects at once with just one closure, and we do as much as we can utilizing the early Sunday morning hours,” Servaes said.