I started out on the 101 Freeway about 2 PM today, heading for Ventura from the east Conejo Valley. When I hit the usual freeway bottleneck just past the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, I remembered that I was not following my policy of staying off the 101 Northbound on Friday afternoons in the summer!
In the morning, or other times of year, it takes me about 30 to 35 minutes to reach Ventura. Well, not today. It was probably 45 or 50 minutes to reach my destination. Going stop-and-go, with a maximum speed of 20 mph, I got to thinking about transportation policy, and how driving north and south in the county is only going to get worse, unless something is changed.
What we have traditionally done in SoCal is add more lanes to freeways. That works, but what I started imagining was a monorail or light train on one side of the 101 Freeway that would stop at all the towns from Calabasas to Ventura. At each town or city, there would be a transportation hub. When you would reach your target hub, there would be a lot of inexpensive taxis, like ”dial-a-rides,” that could take you to just where you wanted to go.
Doesn’t that sound good? I would take public transportation like this…how about you?
Post and photo by Janna Orkney
Can you imagine (the bottle neck) when Springville is developed (Between Las Posas Rd. & Central Avenue) with 2500 more home, bringing additional traffic. If Developers get their way, another 2500 homes will be developed at the base on the Conjeo Grade, below Camarillo Springs, and South of the Ventura 101 Hwy… In The Middle of a Flood Plain!
I love the monorail/light rail idea….but economically it’s a tough sell in surburbia.
There just isn’t the density of people needed to make it work like it has in downtown Phoenix. Even in Las Vegas where I thought it was a great idea, the monorail went bankrupt.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE60D5J520100114
Granted if you counted the true costs of roads ,oil, gasoline and millions of vehicles etc….it makes sense for the state to subsidize such a system….but given the realities of the California budget…..get used to slow and go on the 101…..
I’m glad that someone is talking about true costs. We tend to forget about the short and long-term external costs of a product.
Get used to it is right. Welcome to urban sprawl, the product of increased prosperity, ample land, automobiles, cheap gasoline and poor urban planning. Its result is increased travel time, decreased energy efficiency, and destroyed cropland, forests, open spaces and wetlands while contributing to the death of many central cities.
Talk about poor urban planning, it took me 30 minutes to drive two and a half miles down Kanan when they had one lane closed.