Politics & Government
Council Puts Squeeze on Speeders
It plans to shrink traffic lanes on Camino La Ronda.
If the traffic lanes on Camino La Ronda start feeling skinnier, that’s intentional.
City Council members want drivers to slow down on the feeder street that serves several neighborhoods south of San Juan Creek Road. They had several choices, as traffic engineer Alan Oswald put it, either “vertical” or “horizontal.”
Vertical means placing obstacles in the road, like humps and speed tables. Horizontal entails making the lanes narrower or serpentine.
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Because the latter costs less, requiring basically just paint, the council opted to put the squeeze on the 20-foot lanes at its meeting Tuesday.
“You feel pinched, so you slow down,” Oswald said.
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Speeding – or too much ticket-writing, depending on your perspective – has plagued Camino La Ronda for a while now. Orange County Sheriff’s deputies stepped up patrols of the area in June. A community meeting about the subject .
“It’s like a disease and people just don’t care this is a residential area,” said Diane Dokas. “It’s attitudes we need to slow down.”
Oswald said the street was engineered to handle speeds of 45 mph, so people feel comfortable driving faster than the 30 mph posted speed limit. Because speed humps cannot be used in zones that allow more than 25 mph speeds, that solution was off the table.
Council members were more than willing to go for some paint first. The specific proposal approved calls for a 4-foot, painted median and edge lines to delineate space for parking, leaving the traffic lanes half the size they now appear.
“Let’s start and give it a try. We can reevaluate in six months,” said Councilwoman Laura Freese.