Is Santa Monica Ready for a Face-Lift?

“All I wanna do is have some fun until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard.”

--Sheryl Crow, “All I Wanna Do”

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Sheryl Crow may sing about hanging out on “San-ta Mo-ni-ca Bou-le-vard,” but most West Los Angeles residents dread getting stuck on the traffic-snarled road that leaves them waiting interminably at intersections.

The congested, lopsided and unadorned thoroughfare that winds through West Los Angeles is memorialized as a Southern California landmark, but the portion of the original Route 66 has grown without a plan, stretching to accommodate burgeoning traffic flow and dominated by large croppings of billboards.

But after months of community meetings, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering a $68.2-million project to transform the jammed avenue into a wide, fast-moving boulevard lined with palm trees and orange trees. Bikes and buses would have their own lanes and car-poolers could speed onto the San Diego Freeway without a wait.

“It’s pretty much an eyesore now,” said Hal Suetsugu, an MTA project manager working on the proposal. “This would make it the boulevard it’s always wanted to be. It would be the gateway into West Los Angeles.”

Although no one disagrees that the boulevard needs a face-lift, the proposal has angered residents who say the project would bring more traffic into the community and disrupt businesses and residential neighborhoods with the removal of a buffer side street dubbed Little Santa Monica Boulevard.

Little Santa Monica lingers as a remnant from the last century when the Pacific Electric Railway Red Car ran through West Los Angeles. Double intersections between the two streets now jam traffic an estimated 39 seconds per vehicle--a wait that is expected to reach 96 seconds by 2015 if the street isn’t changed.

At today’s meeting, the MTA board will vote on whether to begin looking for a consultant to prepare an environmental study of the project, which if approved, is scheduled for completion by 2001.

After a year of community input and task force meetings, MTA staff whittled seven alternatives down to one recommendation for the 2 1/2-mile stretch between the San Diego Freeway and Beverly Hills: creating a classic boulevard with six lanes and landscaped medians, two one-way side streets and bike lanes. Sidewalks would be widened and traffic lights would be adjusted to speed buses along. Many of the large billboards would come down and flowering trees would be planted.

Traffic engineers estimate that the improvements will not only increase traffic flow and safety, but save drivers and passengers about $9.5 million in vehicle wear and tear, decrease accidents, save fuel and increase work hours of commuters who use the route.

Urban designers who drafted proposals for the new boulevard examined the structures of famous avenues like Paris’ Champs Elysees and Barcelona’s Las Ramblas in designing the new street.

Although homeowner groups are mollified that the MTA abandoned proposals to turn the boulevard into an eight-lane road resembling a highway, many are still upset that Little Santa Monica will disappear and contend that the one-way side streets will force confused drivers onto residential roads, which will be exposed to the rush of boulevard traffic.

“The south side [of the street] relies on Little Santa Monica to keep out cut-through traffic,” said Laura Lake, president of Friends of Westwood, a local land-use group opposing the project along with two homeowner groups. “It’s like taking the dike away.”

Business owners have expressed concern that they’ll lose nearby parking on the right of way that would be paved over in the project. In order to replace that space, the MTA is considering buying nearby property to create side parking lots, project staff said.

Local homeowners and businesses will have opportunities to voice their concerns at public hearings as the project’s environmental effects are studied starting this summer. The board is expected to vote on adopting the project in the summer of 1998.

Only about half the money has been raised for a new boulevard, which is being funded by federal and state grants and money from Proposition C, a Los Angeles County transportation tax measure. MTA staff hope to acquire more grant money now that a specific design alternative has been selected.

“In a lot of our community meetings, people have said they take any street but Santa Monica when they have out-of-town visitors,” Wells said. “In 2001, I think they’ll choose to take Santa Monica Boulevard.”