Reality Is Where the Rubber Meets the Road Hazard

On TV, every road is perfect.

Sleek cars in commercials cruise down tawny, sinuous stretches of the Pacific Coast Highway or 17-Mile Drive with no trace of gridlock or pothole.

Tires grab flawless black pavement, and engines purr.

Sneering TV drivers grin wickedly, stroke their gearshifts and floor it into the next shot, their arrogant heads apparently untroubled by thoughts of usurious insurance fees, crushing loan debt or speeding tickets.

And as their gleaming vehicles lunge through curves, blur down straightaways and disappear into the fog of the car maker’s logo at Mach speed, our motoring dreams are made flesh.

This is all, of course, thoroughly bogus.

Where are the shredded truck tires, the confusing signs, the busted stoplights and the odd runaway mattress?

Where are the speed demons, swerving drunks, drowsy truckers and flaky teens?

Come to think of it, where are the other cars?

It’s bad enough you Ventura County road warriors have to dodge fellow motorists in real life while TV sells you a bill of goods about how a new car will shed pounds from your waistline, repair your teeth, put a spring in your stride, a hot date in your passenger seat and vaporize all other traffic in your path.

But don’t believe the hype: The real roads themselves--thanks to bad planning and maintenance--are sometimes the deadliest road hazards of all.

Dear Street Smart:

Please help, before someone gets center-punched on the right side, or rear-ended.

In east Ventura, eastbound on Foothill Road, there is a huge, wide right “lane,” marked with a solid white line. I thought you could only cross a wide, broken white line. But when I turn from the speedy straight lane of travel on Foothill to get onto Wells Road, there are cars on my right, in that wide paved area, also turning right.

There’s ample room. Why can’t that wide area of Foothill be repainted to make a dedicated right turn lane and still have room for a bike lane, if that’s what was originally intended?

Barb Fox

Ventura

Dear Reader:

That little navigational land mine sits squarely on the border between the city of Ventura and the unincorporated wilds of Saticoy.

We had to do a little digging around to learn who has the power to defuse it.

Ventura Traffic Engineer Nazir Lalani acknowledges that you’re right: That is a busy, busy turn with plenty of room for re-striping. But it’s not his job. “If it was in the city, I’d be happy to have my crews go back and re-stripe it,” he said.

Turns out the intersection’s upkeep belongs to Ventura County.

Butch Britt, deputy public works director, says he’ll have his traffic engineering staff look at the problem and determine the best solution. In the meantime, keep checking your blind spot.

Dear Street Smart:

I read in The Times that the ramps at the Ventura Freeway and Moorpark Road are going to be revamped.

I am wondering if the block on the northwest side of Moorpark Road between Thousand Oaks Boulevard and the northbound onramp will be included in this work.

There is no hard surface in that area and, as a walker, it is necessary for me to step into the street where there isn’t any shoulder. It is very dangerous, since that is a very busy intersection.

The area is quite muddy after a rain or when the sprinklers have been on at the Chevron station. I have written to the city of Thousand Oaks about this, but they do not reply.

Helen S. Brown

Thousand Oaks

Dear Reader:

Alas, the city of Thousand Oaks is not responsible for that entire interchange, which is what the experts call, in technical terms, “a real lulu.”

Caltrans engineers are drafting plans for construction to widen Moorpark Road and the onramp from northbound Moorpark Road.

The project will also get your hard-working feet up off the road and onto an improved sidewalk along Moorpark Road between the northbound onramp and Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

Once Caltrans blueprints the last curb (and totes up the last penny in the job budget), work is projected to begin in early 1998 on the $1.3-million project, says Caltrans spokeswoman Pat Reid.

And now, the periodic Street Smart Road Hazard Update, Paranoia Check and Plea for Correspondence:

Dear Readers:

Your squeaky wheels got greased.

Several Street Smart readers wrote and called a few weeks ago to complain about the bottleneck crunch that Caltrans had inflicted on motorists using the westbound Ronald Reagan Freeway near Simi Valley.

For a few weeks there, the road near Rocky Peak was set up this way: the westbound lanes narrowed suddenly from five to three, then dropped one more right lane in a quick merge while gaining a new fast lane where the carpool chute ended.

Caltrans engineers said they designed it to their own specs, which allow something like 1,000 yards between back-to-back lane merges.

But after Street Smart published your letters and asked a few tough questions, lo and behold, the second right-lane merge was erased recently and repainted several thousand yards farther down the grade. The commute is smoother now.

Coincidence? We don’t think so.

Street Smart can’t promise results like this every time, but we are always glad to forward complaints to the bureaucrats who have the power to make your life behind the wheel safer. Don’t hesitate to write.

Attention Ventura motorists:

That suspicious looking camera at Victoria Avenue and Telephone Road is not taking pictures and sending automatic tickets to people who blow through stoplights.

Honest. So says city Traffic Engineer Lalani.

That camera is merely a traffic sensor--much like the tripwires buried beneath the pavement--that prompts the signal light cycle when cars are present, Lalani said.

“We’re getting constant questions from people who think we’re trying to sneak something by them without posting [warning] signs, which is required by law,” Lalani said.

This in no way should be interpreted as license to blow all the red lights you want in the presence of such cameras.

Of course, you could drive that way, but we imagine you’d prefer to live outside the Ventura County Jail. We would, anyway.

And we do. Live outside. The jail, that is. Oh, never mind.

Confidential to all you carpool lane scofflaws who are blithely cruising back and forth across the double-yellow lines on the Ronald Reagan Freeway like you haven’t a care in the world: KNOCK IT OFF!

It’s illegal. It’s dangerous. And besides, you’re scaring motorists like Mary Ellen Ross of Simi Valley, who points out that carpool lanes may be entered only at the broken white lines. So quit it.

Finally, a last call for letters on trucks from all our four-wheelers and 18-wheelers.

Send Street Smart your queries, complaints, horror stories and tales of victory on sharing Ventura County’s roads with the mighty American truck. Don’t be bashful. If you don’t, who will?

Peeved? Baffled? Miffed? Or merely perplexed? Street Smart answers 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, 1445 Los Angeles Ave., Room 208, Simi Valley 93065. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain. E-mail us at mack.reed@latimes.com or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. In any case, include your full name, address, and day and evening phone numbers. Street Smart cannot answer anonymous queries, and might edit your letter.