Council Defers Vote on Restricting Traffic

After listening to two hours of testimony from impassioned neighbors, the City Council decided to defer for one year a request by residents of Beachmont Street to close one lane to traffic.

Instead, the council voted 6 to 0 to adopt a plan that increases the number of signs in the area, strives to reduce the number of daily trips along the heavily traveled residential thoroughfare to 800 and beefs up traffic enforcement.

The plan also asks city staff members to assemble a task force of residents from Beachmont Street and Marina Mobile Home Park, the Port District and area businesses to talk about how the problem could be resolved.

If, after one year, the latest changes result in no improvement, the council will consider closing one lane to traffic.

Mayor Jack Tingstrom expressed frustration that the signs and enforcement the city promised two years ago have not been done adequately.

“This is a problem that has to be solved,” Tingstrom told city staff members. “These people coming back one more time is not going to cut it.”

The issue of what to do about heavy traffic zooming from Ventura Harbor down Beachmont to Harbor Boulevard has plagued residents and city officials for almost a decade.

Beachmont residents complain that the traffic dirties their air, rattles their homes and endangers their children. And they say it is growing worse.

But residents of Marina Mobile Home Park on the other side of the Arundell Barranca Bridge, many of whom are senior citizens, say they have a right to travel down Beachmont so that they can avoid the traffic on Harbor Boulevard.

But with a policy adopted this spring that allows neighborhoods to propose their own traffic solutions if 67% of the affected residents back it, Beachmont neighbors took matters into their own hands.

They proposed that the eastbound lane of Beachmont at the bridge be closed to traffic by installing barricades. The westbound lane would remain open.

Nazir Lalani, city traffic engineer, said one of the most contentious issues is deciding who has a right to be involved in the process.

“There is a dichotomy built in,” he said. “The people who want the change want the affected area to be as small as possible. But those who live farther away typically want to preserve the status quo.”