Roads You Love to Hate Not Changing Any Time Soon

Doesn’t it make you mad?

Don’t you get completely tire-biting, dashboard-pounding, vein-bursting, eat-your-golf-clubs, push-the-nuclear-button ticked off at the roads sometimes?

Don’t you wish that you could rent a BIIIIIG wrecking ball and just flatten certain interchanges into wide, smooth boulevards so you can go about your biz--instead of lurching along at 2 mph with the other rush-hour sheep while cooking your clutch, burning 8 gallons to the mile and torching the last tattered shreds of your cool?

Us too.

What say we level the entire migraine-inducing Ventura Freeway between Vineyard and Victoria, repave it twice as wide, give everybody bumper cars and holler, “Free-for-all!”?

Well, we can’t. Sorry. Life doesn’t work that way, except in Street Smart’s gridlock-addled mind.

Probably just as well. If it were, the fuselage of Street Smart’s battered bumper car (86,000 miles and only just paid for last month) would already be plastered with the little black stencils of about 29 lousy drivers, the latest victims of his torn patience. Or, more likely, his stencil would be on someone else’s fender first.

But if we can all hold on just a bit longer, traffic engineers have big, fat plans to improve Ventura County’s most hated chunks of road.

Dear Street Smart:

As a longtime commuter through Ventura County, I have two curiosities about our heavily traveled and growing freeways.

The first is the intersection of the Ventura Freeway and California 1 (Oxnard Boulevard) in Oxnard. What is the latest planned date to modernize this area?

Second is California 23 [Moorpark Freeway] from the 101 to the 118 [Ronald Reagan Freeway]. Are there any plans to add an additional lane on each side of the freeway to relieve the nagging congestion on both sides of the 23 during commuting hours?

Phil Alan Pench

Simi Valley

Dear Reader:

Don’t shoot the messenger, but word is you and your neighbors must wait and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous traffic jams until some time after 2000.

That is when the state Department of Transportation will widen the Moorpark Freeway by one more lane in each direction between the Ventura and Ronald Reagan freeways, Caltrans spokeswoman Pat Reid says.

Reid says Caltrans also plans to begin construction by 2000 on a new and improved interchange for the Ventura Freeway at Oxnard Boulevard.

Even better news: Ventura engineers plan to begin major surgery in September on the entire grisly mess at the Ventura Freeway / Victoria Avenue / Valentine Road interchange.

Ventura Traffic Engineer Nazir Lalani says city contractors will:

* Build a new freeway bridge over Victoria to widen the underpass by three lanes.

* Add a second left-turn lane for the northbound onramp.

* Relocate the southbound on- and offramps for the Ventura Freeway to Valentine Road, just west of the Gateway Title building.

* Widen Valentine Road at Victoria Avenue to eight lanes.

* Relocate the Walker Road intersection 300 feet north of its present spot.

* And lengthen and widen the northbound freeway offramp to Victoria.

Lalani says the whole project will cost more than $15 million and last nearly the rest of the century.

Dear Street Smart:

It’s very dangerous entering the Ventura Freeway heading north at Camarillo Springs Road because there is no entry lane.

It would be nice if Caltrans could install one. The trucks coming down the hill are barreling, and you really have no way to merge safely.

Joan Purcell

Camarillo

Dear Reader:

That must be one of the ugliest interchanges in the county. And yours was one of the most blessedly clear and terse letters Street Smart has received. We harbor a strong respect for both.

As if it weren’t risky enough to merge with massive semis piloted by stressed-out truckers battling lane-switching yahoos who cut them off just to get ahead of everyone else zooming down the absurdly steep and gnarly Conejo Grade--you must do so within a few yards of the onramp.

What’s worse, Caltrans says you’re stuck with it:

“A field investigation revealed it would be necessary to widen the freeway in order to construct an acceleration lane for this onramp,” writes Caltrans’ Reid. “In addition to funding restraints, there is not adequate space to widen the freeway at this location because of the adjacent hillside.”

So, you can continue to use the ramp and risk being knocked nose-over-tailpipe into the paddle cactus covering that hillside.

Or you can cross under the freeway, turn right onto Ridge View Road, left onto Adohr Lane and right onto Pleasant Valley Road and enter the northbound freeway in Camarillo.

Whatever you do, please be careful around the Conejo Grade.

Street Smart hopes that readers will suggest alternative names for it (Speeders’ Folly, the Conejo Cliff, Skateboard Suicide, the Wreck Magnet, Moby Hill, etc.) so we can more colorfully convey the exquisite hazards of the county’s most-feared freeway incline.

Dear Street Smart:

About the northbound Ventura Freeway onramp from northbound Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks, three things cause delays and / or danger:

First is the signal timing. At one time, it was right, but the V.P. of Messing Around got ahold of it. Now, you watch the left-turn arrow at the onramp turn red just as the light that lets you approach it turns green. This makes you wait a full cycle to proceed north on the 101.

Second are the yellow stripes blocking part of the left-turn lane, which force you into the middle lane for some distance. If there are several cars waiting at the onramp light and you obey the yellow stripes, your rear end is still sticking out into the middle lane. A few minutes with a sandblaster could fix this problem.

Third: After a 90-second wait, you get a green left-turn arrow, but you must watch out for southbound Moorpark Road traffic also using the ramp. The ramp’s merging lane is short, and most drivers never look to their left. When you look out your passenger window and only see the bumper of a jacked-up pickup truck, it is scary. If a sign stating “YIELD TO LEFT-TURN TRAFFIC” were placed there, traffic would flow much more smoothly.

Thomas Murry

Newbury Park

Dear Reader:

Yours was one of the most detailed letters we’ve received, and it took quite some time (two months) for Caltrans to decipher it and answer your questions for Street Smart.

But here’s the story: The onramp signal is timed to give preferential treatment to heavier traffic, particularly in the morning, when commuters clog southbound Moorpark Road. That means that your wait at the onramp light will be longer in the morning, Reid says.

The left-turn lane for the northbound onramp cannot be lengthened any more without trapping cars that are turning left off the southbound offramp, she says.

And Caltrans engineers have not yet had time to address the onramp merge problem you pose, Reid says. More details on this as they develop.

One final note:

Street Smart despises name-dropping. But we will stoop to anything to encourage our readers to write us. So here goes: As the famously glum French writer Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “L’enfer est l’autre.” Or, loosely: “Hell is the other guy.”

Please write to us about dangerous scofflaws, clueless drivers, nasty habits, confusing laws and ugly scenes on the road. What sort of drivers really tick you off? What trends in motoring behavior are ratcheting your stress levels ever-higher? Who do you want to see stripped of their licenses, slathered with honey and locked up in a roomful of hungry grizzlies?

Peeved? Baffled? Miffed? Or merely perplexed? Street Smart can answer your most probing questions about the joys and horrors of driving around Ventura County. Write to: Street Smart, c/o Mack Reed, Los Angeles Times Ventura County Edition, 1445 Los Angeles Ave., Room 208, Simi Valley 93065. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain your question. Or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. In either case, include your full name, address, and day and evening phone numbers. Street Smart cannot answer anonymous queries, and might edit your letter.