Road Construction Putting Drivers, Merchants in a Jam

The temperature climbs. The rage rises.

How long will they have to wait?

The traffic at the intersection of Walker Street and Victoria Avenue is at a hot standstill--stalled back to Trader Joe’s.

A woman in a Toyota Camry shovels down lunch behind the wheel. A man in an Isuzu Trooper, windows rolled down in the heat, slumps over the steering wheel and puts his head in his hand. A young man in a pickup taps his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

Work began in June on the largest road construction project in Ventura’s history, a $15.3-million job to rebuild one of the city’s most clogged and complained-about intersections--the Ventura Freeway interchange at Victoria Avenue.

Eighteen months from now, Security Paving of Sun Valley will have converted the two-lane Valentine Road into an eight-lane artery flowing into new onramps and offramps near Ivy Lawn Cemetery. Slightly more than a month into the project, lunch-hour traffic on Victoria is backed up as far as the eye can see, and northbound traffic on the Ventura Freeway has slowed to a crawl.

Some local merchants report drops in business of up to 20%. Alan Dikes of Dikes Chevron at Walker Street and Victoria said gas sales are down 1,500 gallons a day because residents fed up with traffic are finding new routes.

“I’ve seen gas lines. I’ve seen gas crunches. I’ve seen construction,” said Dikes, who has run his business for 30 years. “But this is going to be the biggest construction we’ve ever seen.

“It will be something else when it goes through.”

Jim Salzer, who owns Salzer Records and Salzer Video, said music sales have been strong, but his video business has suffered a 15% to 20% hit.

“We had customers telling us before the construction started, ‘You won’t see us again until it’s over,’ ” Salzer said Wednesday.

He said he has planned special promotional events to lure customers to his store during the construction.

For example, a Playboy bunny will be signing autographs in the store later this month. He said he also has cleaned up and improved the inside of his video store--including putting in new lighting.

“Never in my 32 years of retail experience have I worked so hard to see no response,” he said. “It’s really de-motivating.”

City traffic engineer Nazir Lalani said that in the past two days the traffic crunch has worsened because workers were forced to close one lane of the freeway offramps to reroute sewer lines.

He said that will happen from time to time.

Lalani said that to alleviate traffic congestion, the contractor is not allowed to work during the morning or evening rush hours. Construction is underway only from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“Lunch hour is the problem,” he said. “But if we had him stop at lunchtime, we’d have no time at all out there.”

And so the cars back up.

Dikes said some customers reported that it took them half an hour to drive from the government center on Telephone Road to the freeway onramp.

Cars pouring off the northbound freeway often try to pull across to Victoria. Impatient drivers who go through yellow lights get stuck in the middle of the intersection, blocking traffic in the opposite direction.

Those who work in the area under construction said commuting time has doubled, or even tripled.

“This almost made me late for work today,” said Gary Campos, who works at Salzer Records. “It took me 12 minutes to drive to work today. It only takes me six minutes to walk.”

But other businesspeople said they are weathering the construction just fine.

Pamala Beardsley, manager of Ivy Lawn Cemetery, said the cemetery has been unaffected. “That might be due to the nature of our business,” she observed.

She said she did not know of any hearses or funeral processions that have become snarled in traffic en route to the cemetery. But she said she has notified mortuaries to use a different gate.

Salzer said that despite the drop in his video business, his music store across Victoria Avenue is doing fine. He said the difference might be attributed to the average age of customers.

His music customers tend to be younger and undeterred by traffic, and the video customers tend to be older baby boomers who don’t want the hassle.

He said a friend attributes the continued success of his music business to the Chinese art of arranging environments to create maximum good vibes, known as feng shui.

He said that the week when workers tore down a gas station across the street from Salzer Records was the week the Beastie Boys released their latest CD, “Hello, Nasty.” The store sold 300 copies.

“A friend of mine is into feng shui, and she says it has to do with the way people are attracted to energy,” Salzer said. “With the gas station torn down, having the earth move, there was a lot of energy out there . . . it’s attracting customers.”

As part of the interchange project, a new Valentine Road will be built to bend south of its current route by almost 200 feet, cutting through what is now Salzer’s parking lot and storage garage.

By the time the project is completed, new overpass bridges will have been built. And where 66,000 cars a day now cross under the freeway on six-lane Victoria Avenue, three lanes will be added.

Then, in 2000, city officials plan a separate $2.5-million project to widen and lengthen the northbound onramps and offramps.

In the meantime--as the mounds of dirt grow, and the piles for the new bridge are driven into the ground--some commuters have opted for different modes of transportation.

At 12:40 p.m. Wednesday, Paul Carty of Santa Barbara zoomed past the traffic at Victoria Avenue and Valentine Road on his bicycle. He was riding home from a doctor’s appointment--his flip-flops and some clothes hanging out the pocket of his bicycle shirt.

“It’s nice to be out of the traffic,” he said at a traffic light. “It’s safer to be away from all the frustrated and annoyed drivers.”