Traffic Is Driven by Poor Planning

With the exception of police and fire protection, planning is the most important function local government provides. Through this process, planners and elected officials determine the quality of life, public safety, aesthetics and property values of communities.

One important factor is the improvement, or lack thereof, of streets and intersections operating below the acceptable “level of service.” Level of service is a traffic engineering term that gauges the performance of an intersection or roadway by the length of time it takes to move through it.

The state has determined that levels of service below a certain value require the addition of turn lanes and the widening of roads. Without the required improvements, traffic flow, accessibility and neighborhood congestion soon become major headaches to both the community and elected officials.

As part of the required California Environmental Quality Act review, developers must pay fees to the local jurisdiction to mitigate traffic increases if the level of service decreases below a certain value. These Traffic Safety Improvement Program fees are placed in the city’s traffic safety fund and are to be used for upgrading the affected intersections and roadways.

These improvements, however, are often never accomplished or facilitated by the local jurisdiction. In fact, the fees collected from a developer for specific street and intersection improvements often are diverted to street projects elsewhere in the city or allowed to accumulate in the traffic mitigation fund. The dire problem created by this is compounded when the city continues to approve developments that contribute even more traffic to intersections and roadways that are already over capacity.

This irresponsible and ill-conceived planning has significantly diminished the quality of life in many Orange County communities. The effect is readily apparent in the east Orange area.

Over the last few years, Orange has approved several large-scale residential developments for which the mandated traffic safety funds have been collected. But no intersection improvements have been made, and the city continues to approve development projects that have more effect on overloaded intersections.

In all fairness, Orange is not alone. Virtually every city in the developing parts of Orange County is guilty to some degree of this practice. All too often, the developers get their projects approved, the city collects its traffic safety funds, and the community gets more and more traffic congestion because the street improvements are not made.

Either the cities are not collecting enough funds to make the necessary intersection improvements in a timely fashion, they are misusing the funds, or both.

In Orange, one has only to look at the communities around the intersection of Santiago Canyon Road and Cannon Avenue during rush hour to get a clear picture of the damage heaped upon our neighborhoods.

There is no better example of this “build now, worry about the traffic later” mentality than the Serrano Heights and Santiago Hills II projects in east Orange. Both of these approved developments will contribute substantially to the congestion and gridlock that already exist at the Santiago Canyon-Cannon intersection.

Although traffic safety funds were collected from the developers of Serrano Heights, no improvements to the intersection have been made by Orange even though the development is complete. Santiago Hills II will soon add additional traffic to this same intersection, but the only mitigation being proposed thus far is the usual payment of traffic safety funds to the city.

The city’s five-year capital improvement plan does not include this intersection even though the Santiago Hills II development is expected to be built out within that time. Unbelievably, another development proposal recently has been submitted to the city, which, if approved, will add several hundred homes just 500 feet from this already severely congested intersection. Of course, the city will “mitigate” the traffic by collecting the traffic safety funds. Based on past performance, the developer will get his project approved, the city will collect the traffic safety fees, and the community will continue to suffer.

These indefensible practices over time have diminished our quality of life and local public safety. The effects of traffic are realized as soon as people move in, not several years later. The intent of the California Environmental Quality Act is to identify and mitigate problems, not merely to identify and collect fees.

Fixing roads and intersections should be concurrent with housing construction. It is time that we as a community proclaim enough is enough, and become actively involved in demanding that no more developments be approved until the backlog of improvements is completed.