Separate Lane Should Overcome the Temptation to Yield

Dear Street Smart:

To yield or not to yield?

That is the question at the southbound offramp from the Ventura Freeway at Rice Avenue in Oxnard.

Once you exit, those drivers wishing to turn right on Rice to travel south are confronted with a small transition lane and no lights or instructional signs.

If you yield, invariably the cars behind start honking. But if you use the transition lane, you risk colliding with large trucks and fast-moving automobiles flying down the Rice Avenue bridge.

This is an impossibly dangerous situation. What is the reasoning behind this weird configuration?

E. Norris, Ventura

Dear Reader:

Oxnard traffic officials defend the existing lane configuration as reasonable and safe. They say that drivers using that offramp exit into their own lane parallel to existing traffic on southbound Rice Avenue.

“The offramp traffic turns into its own lane,” said Joe Genovese , the top Oxnard traffic engineer. “The only yielding necessary is for the offramp [drivers] to yield to pedestrians walking along the west side of Rice Avenue.”

Genovese analyzed the accident history at the southbound Ventura Freeway offramp at Rice Avenue, and found no reported accidents there within the past 12 months.

But a recent field inspection prompted by your letter did conclude that some improvements should be made. Specifically, engineers recommend repainting of existing lane stripes and some road signs emphasizing that the offramp enters its own lane.

Those improvements already have been scheduled.

****

Dear Street Smart:

This should be an easy one.

The street light at the corner of Pleasant Valley Road and Sturgis Road in Camarillo has been out for some time.

It is difficult to prepare to turn west on Sturgis Road at night with no light, and the evening is getting longer all the time. I am sure many people would appreciate the light there being repaired.

Dottie Phillips, Ventura

Dear Reader:

The street lamps illuminating the roads and highways crisscrossing the unincorporated sections of Ventura County are maintained by Southern California Edison.

Officials there work constantly to ensure that power is supplied around the clock. But sometimes they are unaware of outages or malfunctions, company spokesman Steven Conroy said.

Such is the case with the street lamp at Pleasant Valley and Sturgis roads, he said.

“We appreciate the heads up,” Conroy said. “We’ll have one of our field crews investigate, and make any necessary repairs.”

Dear Street Smart:

Why the delay in resurfacing of Telephone Road and Victoria Avenue at the government center? The streets have been preconditioned for a month and left in this unfinished state.

That’s excessive. It should take maybe a day or two, weather permitting, rather than a month.

This kind of road creates a hazard for motorcycles, and has caused me grief by chipping my car’s paint and windshield.

I don’t understand why there has been a delay of a month between the prep work and the resurfacing. Perhaps you can help.

Marvin Kaplan, Ventura

Dear Reader:

City officials concede that there have been delays in the road-improvement projects. But for sound reasons.

Both of the projects are being done by the same contractor.

When the improvements were first planned, the delay was scheduled to minimize costs and speed up both projects by doing all the necessary prep work at once, said Nazir Lalani, Ventura’s top traffic official.

“We’re trying to get everything done before Thanksgiving,” he said.

Lalani said that by allowing the workers to do prep work on both streets, one after the other, overall costs would be contained and the finished products would be completed sooner.