City Won’t Divert Cars From Beach Community

Despite pleas from residents of the Ventura Keys to reduce traffic along a busy Beachmont Street, the Ventura City Council rejected a plan to divert cars from the neighborhood.

A majority of council members late Monday refused to approve a city traffic engineer’s proposal to construct a median to prevent left turns from Beachmont Street onto Harbor Boulevard.

City traffic engineer Nazir Lalani said the median would reduce traffic and make the area, for years a source of complaints from nearby homeowners, less vulnerable to accidents. Lalani warned that the city could be risking a lawsuit by not safeguarding the intersection. “Your safety potential is definitely compromised by leaving it the way it is,” Lalani said.

Lalani made the recommendation after Ventura Keys residents complained that trucks hauling heavy motorboats were disrupting their peace.

The council voted after a 90-minute discussion that featured homeowners bickering with mobile home residents.

However, the council did prohibit left turns at the boat launch off Anchors Way, reducing some of the disruption to Beachmont Street homeowners.

Plans also call for staff members to draft a law preventing some vehicles from using certain residential streets, including Beachmont. That ordinance is expected to come before the council later this year.

The decision that came late Monday is the latest in a long and nasty debate that has pitted the rights of a few wealthy property owners against those of motorboaters, who use the launch ramp at the end of Beachmont Street.

Ventura Keys residents complained that too many trucks rumble down the street, and their vibrations cause the walls of some of their homes to shudder and crack.

As early as 1984, they asked the city to close Beachmont Street to nonresidents. But they amended that request after a heated public hearing late last year.