Ventura County

Steve and Darlene Durfee live for the breaks, those fleeting moments when traffic isn’t whipping past their home which sits just a few feet off California 33 in Casitas Springs.

During breaks they can hear birds sing and feel temporarily safe from speeding vehicles.

It’s knowing how life could be that led them to launch a campaign to reroute the estimated 26,500 cars that travel through Casitas Springs daily. And they seem to be making progress. Caltrans agreed that something must be done and held a public meeting last week to discuss potential bypasses.

“Parents here won’t let their kids leave the yard,” said 61-year-old Steve Durfee. “The school bus won’t stop because it’s too dangerous, so the kids have to walk along the highway to get on the bus at Nye Road. That’s not right.”

In September, the Durfees started the Assn. to Bypass Casitas.

“Darlene and I said we can’t go through life and not try, so we bought some stamps and sent out postcards,” Steve Durfee said.

The postcards asked residents if they wanted a two-lane bypass around Casitas Springs and if they would help in the effort.

“We went from a few volunteers to an army,” he said. “We were blown away by the response. We knew there was frustration in the community, but we didn’t know how much.”

Durfee said there are 90 driveways on California 33 and many residents are reluctant to back out of their driveways into the traffic. A mailman was permanently disabled last year when his vehicle was rear-ended on California 33 by a truck.

Ventura Postmaster Richard Horne wrote a letter supporting a bypass, saying the road was a hazard. The post office has installed cluster boxes along the highway so letter carriers won’t have to stop as often along the road.

When he began his effort, Durfee counted cars several times a day for an hour each time. At peak periods, Durfee said 28,000 cars traveled the road, with an average of 26,500 daily.

“That’s about 850,000 a month or 10 million cars a year,” said the retired computer programmer and songwriter.

His proposed solution is a two-lane bypass that would move the 1.4-mile stretch of road toward the Ventura River bank, from Foster Park to Sulphur Mountain Road running west of town between the levee and the bike trail.

The Durfees have 1,500 names on a petition supporting the bypass. But many of the 70 or so senior citizens living in the Arroyo Home Community oppose the plan.

“People shouldn’t buy houses near the highway if they don’t like the noise,” said Phil Boole, 63, a park resident.

The manicured park with 40 mobile homes sits along a stretch of the Ventura River with ducks and egrets as neighbors. The Durfees’ bypass would go around the rear of the park, displacing some mobile homes.

“There is one guy living in this town for one year and he is the one driving all this,” said a 63-year-old park resident who identified himself only as Richard. “The problem is the police don’t enforce the speed limit.”

The Durfees moved last year from outside Seattle to a home in Casitas Springs with a spacious backyard and plentiful trees.

“No matter what happens, this is Shangri-La,” said Darlene Durfee, 56.

They noticed the traffic but thought that it was only sporadic.

“After a few months here we realized it’s not just once in a while,” Steve Durfee said.

The Durfees were disheartened by Wednesday’s meeting with Caltrans. They said Caltrans’ maps were not drawn to scale, leaving the impression that more mobile homes would have to be relocated than what the Durfees proposed. The maps needlessly frightened residents of the mobile home park, the Durfees said.

A Caltrans spokesman said his agency was there to listen to residents and get feedback on potential bypasses before making a recommendation to the Ventura County Transportation Commission.

Any new road, if approved, would take up to seven years to build, Caltrans officials said.

Larry Erhardt, a member of the bypass association, is more upbeat.

“It’s clear Caltrans is listening,” he said. “I don’t believe there is any problem we can’t resolve. It is the moral responsibility of the state to do something.”

He calls the Durfees “absolutely wonderful people.”

“They have done a lot of good,” he said. “All this happened because of them.”