Cautious Motorists Sometimes Get Their Signals Crossed

Dear Street Smart:

When traveling east on California 126 and exiting at Kimball Road, the offramp has three lanes--two for turning left and one for turning right.

There’s a traffic light at the overpass, two lights across the roadway from the left-turn side and the right turn has a signal for the right-turn-only drivers.

This lane has its own lane when it gets onto Kimball.

I see no one except me stopping when this light is red. If someone is behind me they usually blow the horn. Am I missing something?

Why is there a light there?

Ernie Hutchinson, Ventura

Dear Reader:

Apparently, you are a little gunshy at the sight of red lights.

Nazir Lalani, the traffic engineer who designs and monitors traffic lights and their timing sequences in Ventura, said there is no reason to stop when you turn right, toward Telephone Road, from the Kimball Road offramp.

“He’s not supposed to stop,” Lalani said. “That was set up so the right lane feeds into a southbound Kimball Road lane.”

It appears that when you stop while turning right from that freeway offramp, you are simply intimidated by the existing red lights for left-turn drivers.

“The red light he’s looking at is for the left-turning traffic heading north,” said Lalani, who said that he uses that exit daily on his commute home from City Hall.

“It’s a free right turn,” he said. “We wouldn’t even put a yield sign in there.”

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Dear Street Smart:

I am writing to request that something be done about the traffic lights at the Janss Road exit for northbound traffic on the Moorpark Freeway.

What can I say? It’s slow. Tediously so.

Even in the wee small hours, I have waited a minute, maybe more, with no crosswise traffic in sight.

J. Stewart, Thousand Oaks

Dear Reader:

It took months, but state traffic engineers finally have come up with a response to your question.

Based upon your letter, crews from the state Department of Transportation reexamined the traffic light and timing sequence at the Janss Road onramps to both the northbound and southbound sides of the Moorpark Freeway.

According to that analysis, however, the sequence works just as it was originally designed.

“The ‘green time’ for Janss Road traffic varies depending on the volume of traffic on the offramp,” Caltrans spokeswoman Pat Reid said. “A Caltrans traffic engineer conducted an investigation at this location and found the signals are operating as expected.”

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Dear Street Smart:

I’m concerned about the intersection at Telephone Road and South Saticoy Avenue in Ventura.

There’s been a lot of major accidents there. I live right on the corner and I’ve called 911 so many times in the past three years that I can’t even count.

It seems like the problem is the light turning onto South Saticoy Avenue from Telephone Road. There’s a green light instead of just a green arrow only. You can’t see the oncoming traffic and sometimes they’re going 70 mph or more.

There was just a major accident there last week, and there’s usually a big one there every month or two. It really needs to be addressed.

Isis Marks, Ventura

Dear Reader:

City officials already have addressed that intersection, said Nazir Lalani, the Ventura traffic engineer. And according to Lalani, the numbers do not back up your concerns.

“We observed three collisions there in the past year, which is not unusual for this type of intersection,” he said. “There may be some unreported ones, but we never know about those.”

Lalani said that the last time the corner of Telephone and South Saticoy was addressed by the engineering department, they switched the sequence so that drivers turning left from Telephone would be less inconvenienced.

“We used to have the type of left-turn arrow that went from green, to amber and then to red,” he said. “But now it goes from green to amber, and then you can turn left on a green ball.”

Lalani said the new system works even more efficiently, and that there have not been a high number of traffic collisions at the corner.

“We have the same set-up at Clinton and Telephone and at Montgomery and Telephone,” he said. “We’ve got several letters from the community about how well it works.”