In an effort to relieve eastbound traffic congestion on Sunset Boulevard, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation has proposed widening Sunset from west of Barrington Avenue to Gunston Drive. ‘I want to emphasize that this is a proposed project and that the preliminary plans and proposed designs are still very conceptual in nature and not a foregone conclusion,’ LADOT Transportation Engineering Associate Michael Hunt told the Palisadian-Post. ‘If we ever obtain funding for this proposed project, there will be more thorough community outreach performed.’ LADOT hopes to receive funding from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Call for Projects program, a competitive process that provides discretionary capital transportation funding for regional projects. The application deadline is April 24. The proposed project is estimated to cost approximately $6.1 million and LADOT is asking Metro for about $4 million with plans to contribute $2.1 million from its Proposition C funding. If LADOT receives money from Metro, construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2016-17. Hunt presented the proposal to the Pacific Palisades Community Council at last Thursday’s meeting, but the Council did not take a position and plans to further discuss the matter at a future meeting. So far, several Brentwood community groups have expressed opposition, partially because it violates the Brentwood-Pacific Palisades Community Plan, which prohibts street widening on Sunset Boulevard (a scenic highway) for the purpose of increasing capacity. The groups further argue that the widening would result in the loss of green buffer space between homes and Sunset. Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association, Brentwood Park Property Owners Association, Brentwood Glen Association, Bel-Air Skycrest Property Owners Association, Mandeville Canyon Association and Upper Mandeville Canyon Property Owners Association have sent letters of opposition to City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, representing District 11. ‘The problem is that Sunset has become a popular short cut to the 405 for those commuting from Santa Monica and other Westside areas,’ wrote Tom Freeman, president of Upper Mandeville Canyon Property Owners Association. ‘If a new lane is added, it will simply make the shortcut more popular, bringing in more traffic volume.’ Rosendahl told the Palisadian-Post that he has not yet taken a stance on the issue because he wants to hear from more residents. He added that he has also received letters supporting the project. ‘This is the beginning of a process,’ Rosendahl said, adding that if LADOT receives the funding, a town hall meeting will be held this summer. The goal is to have three eastbound lanes to the 405 from Beverly Court (west of Barrington Avenue) and two westbound lanes into Brentwood from the freeway. Because of right-of-way issues, Sunset will be widened by 10 feet on the south side between Beverly Court and Barrington Avenue and expanded between two to 10 feet on the north side of Sunset between Barrington Avenue and Barrington Place. From Barrington Place to Gunston Drive, Sunset will then be expanded by about seven feet in both directions. ‘The city currently has 25 feet of available right-of-way (from curb face) on both sides of Sunset Boulevard through this segment,’ Hunt said, adding that Sunset has already been widened from Gunston to the 405. Two landscaped medians are proposed between Woodburn Drive and Gunston and one near Barrington Place. Barrington Avenue (south of Sunset) will also be widened by two feet on both sides from Sunset to the shopping area at Barrington Court. ‘The widening will allow the northbound left-turn pocket on Barrington Avenue to be extended and provide much needed additional northbound left-turn storage,’ Hunt said. In addition, Barrington Avenue (north of Sunset) will be extended about five feet on the east side to accommodate two southbound left-turn lanes, Hunt said. There will also be a six-foot sidewalk installed on the east side of Barrington that will wrap around onto the north side of Sunset and end across from Barrington Place. Based on a traffic analysis by LADOT traffic engineers, the widening will reduce travel delay in that entire segment, Hunt said. The expansion would provide a savings of 114 seconds per vehicle or a 39-percent decrease in the morning and 65 seconds per vehicle in the evening or a 50-percent decrease. It would save 75,750 vehicle hours per year in the mornings and 49,500 vehicle hours per year in the evenings. ‘It is a short amount of time for an individual, but it adds up,’ Hunt said, arguing that the project would improve air quality, quality of life, and pedestrian safety. The project will also tie into California Department of Transportation’s (Caltrans) efforts to widen the Sunset overpass, Hunt said. Caltrans has already obtained funding and completed an environmental impact review for the project. The northbound 405 off-ramp to eastbound Sunset will be widened to include one more lane, according to Caltrans spokeswoman Judy Gish. Two left-turn lanes will be added on westbound Sunset, so that drivers can merge onto the 405 northbound from Sunset. Right now, drivers must take Sepulveda Boulevard to Moraga Drive to merge onto the freeway.

A community meeting on teenage driving’focused on what parents need to know and what they can do’will be held in Palisades Charter High School’s Mercer Hall at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29. Before spring break, two PaliHi student assemblies were held to address the three student deaths that have resulted from traffic accidents during the past two years (Dillon Henry, Travis DeZarn and Nick Rosser). Monica Iannessa, the school’s director of student services and attendance, explained that students spoke openly about racing, drinking and driving, and being a passenger in a car with someone who had been drinking. ‘We wanted a night with the community to share what we learned from those students,’ Iannessa said. ‘Nick’s dad spoke at the first assembly and it was poignant. This meeting will be a discussion of how the community can work together.’ Iannessa and UCLA student Eric Bollens, who was a good friend of Rosser and is co-chair of the Safe Westside youth and education groups, will both speak. They will be joined by an LAPD West Traffic Division patrol officer, a Senior Lead Officer from West L.A., criminal defense attorney Steven Cron and Jim Snelling of Advanced Driving Dynamics in Anaheim. Public- and private-school parents are invited to attend, and light refreshments will be served.

The Los Angeles City Council approved the proposed Department of Water and Power shortage-year water rates last Friday, and many Pacific Palisades residents may see an increase in their bills after the new rates go into effect on June 1. The proposal to authorize the new rates passed with a 9-to-2 vote, with Councilmembers Dennis Zine and Janice Hahn casting the dissenting votes. District 11 Councilman Bill Rosendahl voted for the shortage-year rates because ‘We’re in a crisis,’ he told the Palisadian-Post Tuesday morning. ‘This sends a clear signal to conserve and use water more efficiently,’ Rosendahl said. ‘The vast number of people who do take the conservation steps will see a reduction in their water bills.’ Rosendahl spoke to the Post shortly before voting for Phase III of the DWP drought plan, which passed 11 to 0. This vote approved new watering restrictions, requiring residents to use sprinklers just two days a week and only before 9 a.m. and after 4 p.m. Hand watering is allowed seven days a week, but only before 9 a.m. and after 4 p.m.   ’Residents who have a gardener must also follow these rules,’ Rosendahl said. The new restrictions will go into effect on May 21. Currently, household water bills average about $83 a month, but if residents do not cut their consumption by 15 percent the bill could go to about $92 starting in June. If consumption is reduced, residents may actually pay less than they do now. In figuring the per-gallon water allocation, ‘The LADWP assigns six persons per household, unless notified otherwise by the customer,’ said public information officer Jane Galbraith. ‘The ‘six’ people also take into account outside water use, e.g., the yard and car washing.’ (DWP figures the average L.A. household uses 1,200 cubic feet per two-month billing cycle’a hundred cubic feet is equal to 748 gallons.) This is the third straight year of statewide below-normal precipitation, and even though California has survived previous droughts, Galbraith explained why the problem has become serious this year. ‘Historically, Los Angeles has had a seemingly unending supply of water from the Owens Valley [via the aqueduct], but we are leaving more water there to control dust on the Owens dry lake bed, re-water the lower Owens River and keep Mono Lake stable. Couple this with environmental factors to maintain species in the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, and we’re not getting the supplies we once did.’ Last year the city used 211 billions of gallons of water: the projected demand for this year is 208 billion gallons, which means that residents of Los Angeles have already started working towards conservation. ‘We’ve asked all Angelenos to conserve, and they are,’ said Galbraith, noting that citywide conservation has improved 5 percent. The Metropolitan Water District, which is where LADWP obtains 80 percent of its water, is telling member agencies to cut 20 percent, which means LADWP needs to cut an additional 15 percent. In passing the shortage-year rates, the City Council asked for a hardship exemption process to accommodate people with special needs. ‘At the present time, there are no exemptions allowed,’ said a LADWP source. In addition to urging residents to conserve water, city officials are taking steps to conserve. The DWP has begun converting its community property to drought-tolerant landscape, and is asking people who see water wasted on city property to report it at www.ladwp.com.   Also, although the city is not currently limiting new building developments, all new projects must include strict water-conservation methods and follow the standards in the Green Building Ordinance, according to L.A. City Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s spokesperson Juan Bustamante. Another way the city has led in water conservation is by installing low-flush toilets and urinals. City officials hope the new rates will encourage residents to take simple steps to reduce water consumption’such as not leaving the water running while brushing teeth, making sure sprinklers work properly, taking shorter showers, fixing leaky faucets, changing landscape watering to fewer days, and xeriscaping. Residents can find out their water allocation by calling 1-800-DIALDWP. After May 1, they will be able to access the information on the DWP Website at www.ladwp.com.

Viewpoint

April is national poetry month, W.S. Merwin was honored this week with a second Pulitzer Prize for poetry for ‘The Shadow Of Sirius,’ and educator Paul Cummins has published a new book, ‘Why Poetry?’ in which he explains the importance of poetry in his life. A teacher and educational visionary, Cummins has spent the last 30 years developing his pedagogical ideas through the various schools he has founded, including Crossroads, New Roads, as well as the New Visions Foundation. And throughout all of this, his steady companion, poetry, has provided ballast for his imagination, philosophies that resonate, a salve for grief, and finally language to explain experience, or as he says ‘language trying to get at the heart of the matter.’ When my children were in elementary school, I, too, would borrow the words of poetry’little messages that I would copy and lay on their pillow at dawn. I copied words that welcomed the day, such the eighth-century Chinese poet Hsueh Tao’s ‘Spring Gazing Song: ‘Blossoms crowd the branches, too beautiful to endure./ Thinking of you, I bloom again,’ or words that expressed a mother’s awe over the miracle of a child, such as Carolyn Kizer’s ‘For My Daughter,’ whose first stanza reads: ‘It was lingering summer/when you announced your birth. As you were rapt in me, rapt in a field-flower haze/of those last, listless days/the waters burst/in a summer storm: Like Beethoven/your bold overture began.’ While contemporary poets do not achieve superstar status equal to that of such early 20th-century poets as Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay or Wallace Stevens, they now speak to a larger audience”a nation of nations,’ says the former New York Times writer Martin Arnold. There are more poets, more readers and more listeners. Here in Pacific Palisades, the monthly Moonday poetry series, hosted by Village Books since 2003, has attracted an enthusiastic, ever-growing audience that is caught in its inexplicable spell. The magic in poetry can be physical, intellectual (opening our minds to a new way of seeing), and spiritual (the transcendent power of prayer). The respected journalist Bill Moyers, who covered the resurgence of poetry in a series of public television specials in the 1990s, admits that he may not understand a poem thoroughly, but ‘the sounds of poetry are pleasing to me, and I enjoy a poem read aloud even when I do not wholly understand it.’ Moyers says that he found further enjoyment by talking to poets about their lives and by so doing was more likely to hear the poet’s voice in the poem. After years of reading poems and using other poets’ words to explain my rush of thoughts, observations and impulses, I decided to catch what I call the molten orb on the page before it cooled. The poetic language settles upon me in the early morning when I am still in that penumbra before waking. It describes my cat’s tail lying softly on my arm as I do my morning yoga, or the red dawn reflected in a puddle.   Poetry is a way of approximating these things despite the limitations of language’a verbal nonverbal. I try to catch that flash, that thing you sort of get, but can’t explain. Like music and art, poetry is forever trying to answer the question, What is it like to be alive? Paul Cummins, a Palisades resident, will be musing about poetry and signing ‘Why Poetry? Reflections on Poetry,Writing and Culture’ on Thursday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore.