Bureaucrats Created Traffic Nightmare

I have a major beef with the Street Smart column. When Ventura County residents write in to identify street and highway traffic problems, they are usually ignored by the transportation department officials and told there is “no problem.”

Obviously, there is “no problem” for the local government bureaucrats whose only interest is to eliminate extra work for themselves. They are blinded and paralyzed by the volumes of worthless bureaucratic minutiae that they themselves have created.

As anyone can attest who must wait at three-minute, eight-way traffic signals at every intersection, or must slam on the brakes each morning at rush-hour while driving south on the Moorpark Freeway near Sunset Hills Boulevard while cement mixer trucks from Cal-Mat in Moorpark crawl up the hill at 10 mph, there is a big problem.

Traffic is not flowing properly anywhere in Southern California, and the situation is getting worse due to weak, ineffective politicians. They allowed overdevelopment around intersections along Janss Road in Thousand Oaks, Westlake Boulevard in Westlake and Rose Avenue in Oxnard in an attempt to enrich their tax coffers. Meanwhile, traffic engineers are wrapped up in ridiculous and ineffective regulations that do not work in the real world.

Apparently, the system of traffic control and highway planning is broken. None of the government officials or traffic engineers is held accountable for the mess they have created. Street Smart only serves as more evidence of how our bloated government has failed to deal with the real basic needs and priorities of the residents they are supposed to serve.

JIM NEWELL III, Thousand Oaks