The streets of our city have been on my mind a lot lately, especially
as I drive along East 17th Street -- or what's left of it.
As hard as it seems to have tried, the city just has not kept up
the maintenance of some of our major thoroughfares over the last
decade or so.
Seventeenth Street is only the latest in a long list of major
streets that have, for one reason or another, been allowed to decay
beyond the capability of simple maintenance to restore their
surfaces.
What brings this to mind, and prompts me to write, is the biennial
review of the Eastside Traffic Plan, reviewed by the City Council at
its meeting on July 19. Part of that presentation included an
exhibit, which is called "Eastside Costa Mesa Historical Traffic
Volumes" -- quite an illuminating collection of numbers. It reflects
average daily trips, or ADTs, as measured on the streets of the
Eastside for this year and shows the numbers recorded in 2003,
2000-01, 1997, 1995, 1991 and 1985. I'm not a big "numbers" guy, but
I found the information reflected in this chart to be fascinating.
For example, did you know that the traffic on Newport Boulevard north
of 19th Street was measured at 103,900 ADTs?
That number is almost equal to the entire population of Costa
Mesa. And that's just one block. It must be all those Newport Beach
folks heading for work, or the Inland Empire folks heading for the
beach. As interesting as these numbers are, the City Council --
spurred on by Mayor Gary Monahan's statement that he's tired of
hearing about cut-through traffic -- decided to cease any further
automatic Eastside traffic studies. Henceforth, any such studies in
the future will be only on an "as-needed" basis. I suspect I'm not
the only Eastside resident disappointed to hear that our lame-duck
mayor is tired of hearing about cut-through traffic in our
neighborhoods.
Perhaps he wouldn't hear about cut-through traffic if the arteries
intended to move that traffic were in better shape. Coincidentally,
the city recently unveiled its plan for the refurbishing of East 17th
Street, which turns out to be a partial improvement, at best. As any
frequent driver on this street can tell you, it has become a real
adventure to try to maneuver around the pot holes and deteriorating
pavement over the past couple of years. If there had been anything
like a normal rainfall during that time period the water would have
further loosened the cracked pavement, and you would need an
all-terrain vehicle to move from Irvine Avenue to Orange Avenue.
