Patience a Virtue--Even in Awaiting a Right-Turn Lane

If only the stuff came bottled, you could whip it out on the road and take a swig:

PATIENCE.

For the solid gridlock spread ahead of you on the Ventura Freeway like a congealed four-lane river of tar.

For brain-dead pilots of big, old sedans cruising a rock-steady 60 mph in the left lane while the rest of the world wants to go 70.

For the 18th time your kid whimpered over the holiday weekend, “Why aren’t we there yet?”

But patience comes only from within. It withers in the face of rush hour, crummy drivers and sticky intersections.

And sometimes it all but flees:

When the stoplight glows red too long. When the clock has leaped 10 minutes ahead of you and your appointment. When the gas tank holds only vapors, the nimrod in the next car won’t turn right and you run into something like this:

Dear Street Smart:

There is no right-turn lane connecting westbound Seaward Avenue in Ventura with the onramp for the northbound Ventura Freeway.

I understand that the Seaward bridge over the freeway is due for a major overhaul. However, this situation could be fixed with some paint on the street.

There is room enough for vehicles turning right onto the freeway off Seaward, but no lane. This usually means a car will squeeze past the cars waiting to cross the bridge. It is usually a tight squeeze and drivers are watching to make sure that their mirrors do not smack!

What about repainting the two lanes crossing the bridge to include a right-turn lane for onramp traffic?

Brian Watnick

Ventura

Dear Reader:

Having smacked his own share of mirrors (albeit none on that bridge), Street Smart could probably beat you in Olympic squeezing in three straight heats.

But he knows better than trying to beat that onramp, and so does Ventura Traffic Engineer Nazir Lalani.

“If you try to shift the lanes over, [they] won’t line up crossing over the bridge,” Lalani says. “The lane closest to the striped median ends up running into the opposing traffic coming north.”

That may change, come Ye Greate Seawarde Bridge Reconstruction (wherein Our Hero and his Faithful Readers, to their great consternation, brave a plethora of slow-moving motorized conveyances and their foul-tempered occupants and endure the foetid assault upon their delicate senses of certain smoke-belching road repair leviathans and sun-melted Slurpees to emerge victorious in the New Millennium and enjoy a more harmonious ease of travel).

Or, in short: The whole bridge will be widened to eight lanes and the northbound onramp widened to two lanes. The $7.75-million project is to begin next summer and end in March 2000. And if Caltrans deems it appropriate, a separate right-turn lane will be set up.

Dear Street Smart:

At the intersection of Oxnard Boulevard and Gonzales Road, there are railroad tracks.

If you have a long wheelbase car such as a 1977 Lincoln Continental and are traveling west on Gonzales and stop for a red light at the limit lines after crossing the tracks, your rear end is hanging over the tracks.

What happens if a train comes before the traffic light turns green?

Alden L. McMurtry

Oxnard

Dear Reader:

Quite likely you will suddenly become the owner of a very short wheelbase car such as a 1977 Lincoln Continental.

No, in all seriousness, Caltrans and Union Pacific have worked out a safe solution that is already in place.

The signal is wired to the train tracks, says Pat Reid, a Caltrans spokeswoman.

As a train approaches the crossing, the gates drop to block vehicles (such as certain, oh, shall we say, Lincolns) from entering the tracks, and the signal is “preempted,” Reid says. That means that the signal turns green for the roadway crossing the tracks, allowing all cars that have already passed the gates to move forward and out of the path of the train. And to remain as long and luxurious as their owners would prefer them to be.

Dear Street Smart:

Something needs to be done about the traffic signals lining Main Street in Ventura.

I work evenings in the east end of town and live in the west end. When I drive home, I have to stop at literally every single traffic signal on the way, despite the fact that I am the only driver on the road this late.

When I leave for school at 6:30 a.m., the same thing happens: not another car in sight, but every traffic light is red.

Any chance of getting this fixed?

Jeremiah Johnson

Ventura

Dear Reader:

Street Smart has always been mystified and amazed by the synchronization of traffic lights. Cruising from one end of Manhattan to another on a near-endless string of greens is a guilty pleasure akin to having the candy machine drop two Kit Kats at once.

But cruising from one end of Ventura at quitting time will likely always be (sorry!) a stop-and-go proposition for late-shifters and other nighthawks such as Street Smart, says traffic engineer Lalani.

The lights are synchronized in daylight hours to feed traffic smoothly along Main through major intersections such as Thompson, Seaward, Santa Clara and Ventura in 50- to 60-second streams.

But from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., as traffic lightens up to a few cars per minute, the synchronization computer automatically shuts down and leaves the light-changing duties to sensors buried beneath the pavement, Lalani says.

This means that if the last motorist through a Main Street intersection came out of a side street, he probably tripped the signal to show you a red light. And you have to trip it again.

“I’ve had one resident complain about the lights at night,” Lalani tells Street Smart. “He said, ‘I could have shot a gun down that street and nobody would have been hurt.’ Yeah, I could fix it (and leave the synchronization on), but then you’re going to get people writing to you and saying, ‘Hey, why am I sitting around here at night when there’s nothing going on on Main Street?’ ”

The fact is, we cannot win. On the other hand, isn’t it always better to know why we’re losing?

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, 93 S. Chestnut St., Ventura, 93001. 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.