Mailbag: Change ‘do nothing’ to ‘do something’

Thank you for the April 29 column by David Hansen on the “do-nothing” attitude of our city meetings (“Meetings and more meetings, and canyon challenges still unresolved”).

As a 45-year resident of Laguna Beach, I have stopped attending these frustrating meetings of much talk, more committees and no action.

We lived in Florence, Italy, and many small Italian towns and saw firsthand how successful a no-traffic zone in the city center can be. All the little loved-to-death Tuscan coastal and hill towns have followed suit. Even the Amalfi Coast, with similar topography and traffic problems as Laguna, has forged ahead with viable plans.

What is the Italian solution?

If you want to come visit, shop, buy, eat and enjoy our little town, you park at either end and shuttle into the town center. In Italy, unless you have a handicapped or a resident sticker, your car stops at the perimeter. Frequent buses (every 10 to 15 minutes) shuttle you in. Since you are not worried about your meter running out, you shop more, spend more, visit longer and come back more often.

If Laguna is too much for visitors, they stay on the 405 Freeway and keep going.

During the six-week festival crunch, we could run frequent southbound trolleys in a trolley lane created with no parking on the south side of Coast Highway. The northbound trolleys could run on a similar lane on Glenneyre Street.

Try it Laguna, you’ll like it. If not, go back to the current insanity.

Sondra Nishkian Sieg

Laguna Beach