Erbes Road improvement

If you've been wondering what those itty bitty signs on the south end of Erbes Road are all about, here's what I've pieced together thus far.

The city is finally moving forward with a long shelved plan to expand the southern portion of Erbes Road and it seems they'll also be expanding the number of lanes at the intersection on both sides of Hillcrest Boulevard. If you've ever encountered the 'rush hour' traffic on east or westbound Hillcrest or, to lesser extent, southbound Erbes Road, you know how fun this intersection can be. I've recently seen queue's over half a mile long on Hillcrest, waiting to turn north on Erbes (and wondered... what the heck are those people thinking?)

A community meeting to discuss the environmental report for the Erbes Road Improvement Project is scheduled for this Thursday (May 6^th, 2005) at the Civic Arts Plaza.

Here's my copy of the documents from April 30 (they're a bit hard to find elsewhere).

Sophia Fischer contributed a pretty complete (if understated) overview for the Acorn: Improvement project for Erbes Road slowly makes progress. What's happened? Quite simply, the two lane 23 North, which worked reasonably well even a decade ago was overwhelmed by two factors: the completion of the 23 / 118 Freeway connection (the Simi Valley and northern San Fernando Valley conduit) and the ever growing local traffic. The expansion of 23 to three lanes in each direction won't happen any time soon (and even when it does, my experience tells me the speed on the interchanges will continue to plummet).

Eventually, a lot of traffic bailed from 101 using Ranchero Road and Hampshire Road, and for a while the alternative routes worked pretty well.

Nothing is static, certainly not traffic. The opinion that 'the freeway' will take care of it is about to be overcome on the last major section of two lane road in town. I'm not overjoyed, this is my part of town, yet I see the inevitability of it. I gripe occasionally because the traffic light at Erbes and Hillcrest seems to be attuned to some weird biorhythm all it's own, but I have come to appreciate living just outside a weird eddy of the past.

The next place for stop light angst is going to be the day that a light is added to Erbes and Sunset. It'll happen if I stick around long enough (I don't want to be here that long I think).