In a letter to Santa Monica’s City Manager this Monday, Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl urged cooperation between the two cities to mitigate the effects of the California Incline on L.A. residents. He also warned that Santa Monica transportation planners have underestimated the effects of current Incline transportation plans on Santa Monica Canyon and Pacific Palisades. The councilman has not yet written a motion to be passed by City Hall. His staff members say that is still an option the councilman might consider, if Santa Monica does not collaborate with L.A. ‘While I applaud Santa Monica’s efforts to make essential seismic improvements to the California Incline, I am concerned that planning for the traffic mitigations is not moving quickly or thoughtfully enough, and our respective transportation departments are not working collaboratively,’ Rosendahl wrote. Engineers consider the 60-year-old incline, which connects Pacific Coast Highway to Ocean Avenue, structurally unsound. Many residents of Santa Monica Canyon worry that West Channel Road will be overwhelmed with gridlock when the Incline is closed for as long as one year, beginning in 2009. And they fear that Santa Monica will ignore the effects on their community, which is part of Los Angeles. According to Rosendahl, preliminary analysis of the draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) by engineers at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) seems to justify those fears. ‘Staff at LADOT has reviewed the draft EIR, which states that those neighborhoods would suffer only a marginal increase in traffic. LADOT engineers question that assumption,’ he wrote. Among other concerns, engineers say that the construction timeline is too optimistic; Santa Monica’s traffic projections do not examine weekend traffic patterns; and they do not include a Traffic Management Plan (TMP) to detour traffic during construction. Rosendahl proposes developing a ‘joint Santa Monica-Los Angeles California Incline Working Group,’ which would be composed of the offices of Councilman Rosendahl and the Santa Monica City Manager, the two cities’ transportation agencies and local stakeholders. Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association President George Wolfberg said he was pleased by Rosendahl’s proposals. Wolfberg has closely followed Incline construction plans, which he expects could have a massive impact on the canyon. ‘If there is goodwill on the part of the city of Santa Monica, then I’m optimistic,’ he said. ‘[Santa Monica] staff seem to reasonable people who understand the issues we’ve brought up.’ —— To contact Staff Writer Max Taves, e-mail reporter@palipost.com or call ext. 28.
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