Road Repairs Should Be Worth the Wait for Motorists

And then there is The Wait.

If there is one thing Street Smart hates (and in the wrong mood there is plenty on Ventura County’s roads to dislike) it is The Wait.

Not the endless, but relatively short Wait for the Light to Turn Green, after your crummy alarm clock sent you sprinting out of the house 48 minutes late with cold Pop-Tarts and bad hair.

Nor the slightly more endless Wait for the Grease Monkeys in the Shop With Big Hammers to quit pounding on your carburetor and rescue you from their staticky TV (now in the third hour of a Dukes of Hazzard marathon) by handing you a bill the size of a Third World country’s transportation budget.

Nor even the Perpetual Wait of Evening Rush Hour on the Moorpark Freeway in Thousand Oaks.

No. What we curse most is the Wait For Road Improvements That Are Due Any Day Now.

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Dear Street Smart:

An earlier Street Smart column said that a proposed traffic signal at Central and Santa Clara near Saticoy was in the works and would be operating in the near future.

That was quite a while ago. I was just wondering whether it got hung up in red tape or whether the source was incorrect, or what happened. I’m still waiting behind 30 cars at the crazy blinking light.

Charles Erb, Ventura

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Dear Reader:

That light was promised last summer. We have an answer for you.

But first, a very short Wait While Street Smart Tells You More About That Road.

That whooooole stretch of Santa Clara Avenue was shrouded in mystery for months, until work there ended this past winter.

Street Smart used to roll out of his underground hide-out in Simi Valley to cruise the nifty, rural California 118 through Somis toward Ventura, only to run smack into barricades south of Saticoy.

Instead of a quick shot west to the Ventura Freeway, we all were forced to detour north for scenic vistas of the Santa Clara River bridge, the Freeman Diversion Dam, California 126 and other unrequested landmarks.

Almost all of us, that is.

If you peered through the barricades, you could spot swarthy men using huge cranes to shift enormous amounts of dirt and mysterious pieces of equipment. And you could spot trucks with important-looking county emblems that came and went at will, using the same route that by all rights you should have had access to.

Not until recently did Street Smart learn that the whole thing was in fact a drainage-upgrade project by the Ventura County Flood Control District, and not some elaborate shell game designed to fritter away your taxes in the most impressive way possible.

Heavy rains, higher-than-expected underground water and bad soil conditions made the job stretch on longer than planned, says Deputy Public Works Director Butch Britt, who took the heat that he says was unjustly directed at his agency.

But that was not what delayed your signal light, Britt said. Instead, paperwork problems with Caltrans have held off the Santa Clara/Central stoplight until this month. The Board of Supervisors is due to vote March 25 on a contract to add left-turn lanes at Santa Clara Avenue’s intersections with Central Avenue and Wright Road. Work on the 70-day project must begin within 30 days of the vote.

And that road-and-drainage improvement project will include a fully working traffic signal at Santa Clara and Central, which should go up sometime in the late summer, says Ken Gordon, project manager.

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Dear Street Smart:

I first noticed it as a crack next to the double yellow line on southbound Highway 33, between Creek Road and Sulphur Mountain Road.

Now it can be classified as a mini-trench.

On the downhill grade, just south of Creek Road, there is a small trench that looks to be 3 to 4 inches wide, and many feet long. Is this the first sign that the road is falling into the creek, or is it a normal occurrence where paving joints converge? Or is it something completely different?

Scott Eicher, Ojai

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Dear Reader:

David Servaes, veteran Caltrans engineer, says his crews have been patching and watching that crevice for several years, and it keeps moving.

The southbound roadbed is settling slowly toward the creek, but so long as the crack is kept filled and repaved periodically, water won’t get into it and undermine the road, Servaes says.

“We’ve been watching that, we’re aware of it, and we’ll make sure it’s not a traffic hazard,” he says.

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Dear Street Smart:

This is in response to Eric Kassan (who last week complained that trucks slow down while climbing steep grades on the Moorpark Freeway, and wondered why they could not simply be banned).

I drive a truck for a living. If it weren’t for even half the trucks on the highway, you wouldn’t get half of those little amenities you’re used to, my friend. So you try it sometime, let me know how it is.

And get back to me when you need something hauled your way. Quit complaining about the trucks up there. We didn’t build the highways, Caltrans did.

Ken Weirick

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Dear Readers:

That creak you hear is the hinge on a rusty, ancient container owned by a mythical old soul, name of Pandora. And Street Smart aims to wrench it all the way open.

Trucks are the scariest, hardest-working and perhaps most misunderstood vehicles on the road. They put backbone in our economy and ruts in our roads, fear in our hearts and food on our tables.

Disagreements between trucks and cars can often prove spectacularly fatal. Yet truckers often say the cars are at fault.

Having interviewed a few truckers in our time, Street Smart has two kinds of respect for them: the kind earned by people who spend their lives behind the wheel, and the kind given to anyone in control of a multi-ton chunk of metal hurtling down the Conejo Chute at 70.

We invite truckers and nontruckers to write in with any thoughts at all about trucks--horror stories, legal inquiries and information on all kinds of truck lore.

We all share the roads of Ventura County; we might as well get to know each other. Write. E-mail. Call.

Let’s talk trucks.