Of the six people who died in traffic collisions in 2009 in Santa Clarita (the last year of data from the CHP), three were motorcyclists while 32 motorcyclists were injured in the SCV that year. That seems to be significantly higher than the rest of the County, where only 14% of fatal collisions involved motorcycles (80 motorcycle fatalities that year).

Just a bit of context to think about as you look at the Signal’s picture of the accident scene at San Francisquito road. You can see the female driver of the Toyota hunched over in her car, obviously distraught.

It’s striking to me how important these bridges are in our town. Kids & adults use them to safely cross our freeway-like streets. They literally link neighborhoods together, and they are neat to stand on and watch traffic go by underneath.

They can also function as the best-placed and most noticeable billboards in town, which is why the City allows non-profits to advertise on them. Occasionally they serve as platforms to express political sentiment, as in 2007 when the City put up THANK YOU BUCK! banners, or just a few days later, when someone modified the B to look like an F, or during election season in 2008 when Pro Prop 8 people swarmed public spaces in the SCV, including these paseo bridges. The bridges can add perspective too: I’ve photographed Tea Party rallies from a paseo bridge in Valencia, and I’ve watched the 4th of July fireworks from them too. Lately I’ve spied Ron Paul fans on the bridges.

What’s interesting about the paseo system is that it started as a piece of privately-funded infrastructure that served as a bullet point to sell Valencia to SCV newcomers, like my parents who told me about them before I moved here. But now, as you can see above, the City maintains them as public infrastructure. Over the decades they’ve morphed from being a novelty to something essential. We may not have much in this town that we can claim is originally ours, that is unique, but I think the paseo system and its numerous bridges come close.

The Comprehensive Newhall Pass Disaster Planning Tool 1.0 (CNPDPT) was developed for city planners, traffic engineers, emergency operations centers, law enforcement officers, CalTrans workers, and everyday Newhall Pass road warriors to help bring some order to the chaos.

The scenarios described in the instrument are based on real-life or potential disaster events that have/could result in the partial or full shutdown of the Newhall Pass.

It is presented free of charge or license fee below as a public service of SCVTalk:

Here’s how it works:

1. Print the instrument out, preferably on a heavy, sturdy paper
2.  Cut the wheel out, discard remaining paper
3. Cut the triangular black Disaster Randomizer Selector tool out from the wheel
4. Take care when inserting a sewing needle or other sharp instrument in the center of the wheel
5. Insert bottom end of sewing needle into cardboard base (a used box works well in our testing)
6. Prior to Monday morning commute, simply give the wheel a spin to assist you or your agency in planning for the terrible disaster about to befall the Newhall Pass
7. If you are a commuter, plan accordingly. Always have water and food on hand in your vehicle, some way to relieve yourself, music, and potentially a weapon (in case of zombie hordes)

Thank you in advance for any feedback you have on the design of the instrument or the scenarios presented. Remember, SCVTalk cares and we will continue to develop the tool as new, unforeseen disasters present themselves.

Dr. Donald Shoup, a Yale-trained economist, studies something no other respectable economist studies: the economics of parking. And his findings are pretty shocking.

Behold the cost we all bear for our laziness and need for convenience:

After 36 years, Shoup’s writings—usually found in obscure journals—can be reduced to a single question: What if the free and abundant parking drivers crave is about the worst thing for the life of cities? That sounds like a prescription for having the door slammed in your face; Shoup knows this too well. Parking makes people nuts. “I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain,” he says. “How to get food, ritual display, territorial dominance—all these things are part of parking, and we’ve assigned it to the most primitive part of the brain that makes snap fight-or-flight decisions. Our mental capacities just bottom out when we talk about parking.”

Nail. Meet Hammer.

In my 20 years of SCV living, I’ve found that few things piss SCVers off more than not finding convenient parking. I remember the aggression and anger (sometimes descending into fist fights) of fellow students at Hart and COC. The non-stop letters to the editor about the City’s admittedly misguided back-in parking plan. The live transformation -before your very eyes- of a genteel suburban soccer mom into a maniac gunning it through the parking lot of Westfield during the holidays.

Of course this isn’t just limited to SCVers. The article itself is all about parking in Los Angeles. But I’d argue that SCVers feel even more entitled to abundant, free, and convenient parking than anyone else in LA County. At least in LA there’s an expectation that you’ll have to pay for parking. The same is not true in Santa Clarita; indeed, we expect  free, convenient, and highly-available parking at all times and places, anything else is a license to get our pitchforks and torches and storm City Hall.

We have an upcoming City Council election. If you were to ask me how to get elected to the City Council, I’d say I have no idea. But if you were to ask me how to fail at getting elected but get more press & public attention than any of your opponents, I’d suggest you talk openly and boldly about your new plan to implement pay parking at some of the City’s more popular attractions and sites as a method to encourage alternative transportation and better land use.

Your candidacy would go down in flames (perhaps getting you an all time low vote count) but you’d live on in SCV infamy and become the hero of parking/transit geeks like me. And you might be responsible for voter turnout hitting 20 or 30%!

Along the same lines as the poor family that lives in Sand Canyon and has seen far too many crashes in their neighborhood, I have two ideas to combat the problem. One is rather traditional and boring and will no doubt outrage many: a massive, city-wide crackdown on speeders with coordination between Sheriff’s Deputies, the CHP, and the  city. This is admittedly a rather brutish approach to the problem, but it’s necessary nonetheless. If drivers -young and old alike- have no fear of the kinetic consequences of speeding, then they at least ought to fear getting caught speeding. It’s hard to probe the minds of Santa Claritans, but does anyone think the City’s current anti-speeding campaign (bus bench ads. Seriously. How many speeders ride the bus?) is scaring people enough to slow down?

To whatever extent possible, the city ought to establish a baseline for speeding then build some measurements into the program. Example: create speed zones around town, then start measuring. During week 1 of the crackdown in Zone 2, x number of citations were issued with Y being the percentage each driver was exceeding the speed limit by (5mph over in a 50mph zone would be 10%, for example). Week #2 saw x percentage drop-off in the amount of speeding citations and y% drop in the same zone. The Sheriff’s Department should be ruthless with the citations, and the City Council should steel their spine for in advance of the inevitable blowback.

Couple increased police enforcement with the placement of several more traffic speed monitoring devices, more automated speed/radar signs on certain high speed roads, hell even placebo police cars, and then voila! Watch as speeds decrease overtime as the perception of enforcement increases. We don’t necessarily need to start paying every Deputy overtime; all that is really needed is the perception that we’re getting tough on speeders.

The City already has an intelligent and advanced traffic information network; it’s time to augment that network and put it to use in the service of safety, not just efficient traffic flow.

Secondly, the radical but fun part: embrace the SCV’s need for speed. For whatever reason this town has a proud heritage of racing. Maybe it’s our beautiful, twisty, canyon roads, maybe the perchlorate in the water increases aggression and enhances the daredevil gene , maybe ye olde Saugus Speedway and exhaust fumes and gasoline are embedded in our consciousness…who knows?

Let’s embrace it in a controlled, practical, and fun manner by establishing Sheriff’s Department-managed, highly-controlled legal drag races.

Sounds crazy right? Not so, when you consider the National Hotrod Association has a Street Legal style racing program at tracks around the country (the nearest one is in Bakersfield or Pomona).  True, we don’t have a track, but that didn’t stop a San Diego professor from seeking out state grants and building a non-profit agency called RaceLegal that provided a “youth oriented environment in a neutral and centrally located location where we could replicate a street environment, but with safer and sanctioned conditions that insured the safety of our racers and their fans.” The group hosts 12 races every year and has seen youth speeding related deaths decline dramatically since the program was built in 1998. Here’s an example from just last year:

The idea would be to allow youths to drive their cars fast, but in a controlled and stable environment. This would not only make it safer for them, but for us. It’s been done in other communities and I’m confident that if we put our minds to it, we could do it here.

I’m admittedly somewhat of a maniac about safety on the streets. I blame two factors: almost being hit several times while riding around the SCV and this blog. I’ve been reading about crashes like the one on Tuesday for years. What’s more, I have a good memory and so each time I drive by a crash site, I’m reminded of what happened there, of the violence that accompanied driver, passengers, and innocent victims in the last moments of their life. Judging by the comments here and elsewhere I’m not the only one tired of the carnage.

The City should step up to this challenge and see if we could at least take a stab at reducing the number of speed related crashes and fatalities in our valley.

The Allstate Insurance Company (NYSE: ALL) today released its seventh annual “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report™.” The report ranks America’s 200 largest cities in terms of car collision frequency to identify which cities have the safest drivers, according to Allstate claim data.

For the past seven years, Allstate actuaries have conducted an in-depth analysis of company claim data to determine the likelihood drivers in America’s 200 largest cities will experience a vehicle collision compared to the national average. Internal property damage reported claims were analyzed over a two-year period (from January 2008 to December 2009) to ensure the findings would not be impacted by external influences such as weather or road construction.

A weighted average of the two-year numbers determined the annual percentages. The report defines an auto crash as any collision resulting in a property damage claim. Allstate’s auto policies represent about 10 percent of all U.S. auto policies, making this report a realistic snapshot of what’s happening on America’s roadways.

So how did Santa Clarita fare?

Well according to the report, Santa Clarita drivers average 8.8 years between accidents, a number that is 13.9% above the national average. We’re worse even than Lanacster, whose drivers average an accident every 10.8 years. LA drivers average an accident every 6.6 years, which made them the second-worst large driving city in the US.

Overall, out of the 200 cities studied, Santa Clarita ranks 124th. Fort Collins Colorado is America’s safest driving City, where drivers average nearly 16 years between accidents.

Allstate’s report doesn’t seem that rigorous to me, but I will say this jives with my view of the SCV. I’m hyper-alert and cautious whenever crossing a street because you never know when someone is going to blow through the crosswalk light and make a hood ornament out of you. The City? Well they’re part of the problem. They’re almost exclusively focused on one thing: moving cars quickly. That’s why they segregate cyclists onto off-street paths that many times end up in Nowheresville, that’s why they’re more than happy to add lanes to Newhall Avenue without building sidewalks for pedestrians, that’s why they’re so proud of the beautiful new high speed CVC and the triple turn lanes on Bouquet and Soledad.

And guess what? It works. Traffic flow in the City is very fast as I demonstrated a year ago.

But speed comes with a cost: collisions are not only more likely, but they are more likely to be severe.

Anyway not a lot to be proud of in this report, let’s wait and see how (or if) the City spins it.

Frustrating right? I mean it’s not a good way to start your day, but these things happen. They’re called traffic jams and they’re an unfortunate fact of life in Los Angeles County.

Five minutes into the stop, my fellow SCVers behaved appropriately. They took their headphones off, woke up from their nap, or put the newspaper down. They quietly inquired of their neighbor what was going on. They looked out their windows to see why the traffic was backing up all around us and why nothing seemed to be moving. Then they went back to whatever they were doing to occupy the time.

By 15 minutes into the stop, people were understandably getting restless. I pulled out my laptop to see what the problem was. Google maps showed a long red & black line on the street we were on. What’s more, police started to show up. Obviously there was an accident or something wrong on the road ahead. Motorists started making their own rules and flipped U-Turns. Passengers in the bus started glancing at their watches nervously and texting people.

At 20 minutes, passengers who were only a few blocks from their destination decided to exit the bus. The bus driver let them off immediately and they went on their way. I still had five miles to go in my trip, so I couldn’t do that. I started to hear loud sighs and grumbling from the remaining commuters.

It was around the 30 minute mark that people started to lose their sh*t  pleasant suburban demeanor. A 50-something blonde woman two rows ahead of me called a friend who was on the 7:30 bus (commuter bus riders form tight & useful albeit temporary friendships with other bus riders). After a few minutes of complaining loudly that our “stupid” bus driver wouldn’t flip a U in the middle of a crowded 6 lane street, she found out that the bus behind us had been dispatched to avoid the gridlocked street and head down an alternate street.

Now armed with insight into our unfortunate situation vis a vis her friend who was enjoying a hassle free ride to work, she erupted. Walking up and down the aisle quickly, she pressed the males on the bus. “Don’t you care? Aren’t you upset?”

Do something! 

Why yes, I was upset, but what the hell am I going to do about it? Rip off my shirt to reveal the Bus Captain superhero outfit I wear beneath each day? Beat the driver senseless? Go Hulk and rip some seats up and throw them out the window?

But she, and several others, were beyond reason. The mutiny had begun.

At T+ 40 minutes, our 45 foot “Where the Good Life Takes You” coach became a rolling scene from Lord of the Flies. Sentiments most foul poured forth from seemingly kind little old ladies. Abuse after abuse was hurled at our poor driver as more and more angry riders discussed what they should do. You could almost see some of the riders grabbing for the conch in a frenzy.  One got the bright idea to call the dispatcher, thinking that if enough mean things were said to that poor bastard, he’d order our driver to ignore policemen all around us, the dozens of cars surrounding us, drive through the downed rail arms Dukes of Hazard Style, and get us on our way.

And then, just as I was becoming agitated enough to exit the bus and hail a cab (or walk), we started rolling again. And just like that, the atmosphere of mayhem dissipated, the older woman returned to her seat, and everything was at it should be. I arrived to work 45 minutes late but with a good story to tell and some insight into the savage capacity of your average SCVer.

Santa Clarita Mayor Marsha McLean wants to fix the state’s existing trains and railways with money already allocated for high-speed rail.

This week, she asked Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, whom she should talk to in Washington to get $5 billion allocated to the California High Speed Rail Authority diverted to repair existing train tracks.

“There’s talk going around about the $5 billion that have been allocated to the high-speed rail authority to build some tracks in the Central Valley — not to put a train on them, but just simply to build the tracks — and they’re on a fast line to do that.”

“Since that money is already sitting in their account and it’s already allocated, what we’re trying to do is bring attention to the federal government about taking that money … and using it to upgrade existing Metrolink and rail throughout California.”

SIGNAL

This has to be out of context or bad reporting. No one could be that dense. Because the way it’s presented, our Mayor seems to think she could just call up some guy in Washington and have him or her undo portions of an Act of Congress, California’s voter-approved Proposition 1A, and a whole bunch of other transportation policies just because she thinks it’s “ridiculous stuff.”

It’s like she thinks that her efforts to derail HSR to this point have failed just because she hasn’t talked to the right guy. And she wants McKeon to give her the 411 on The Man in Washington who will just kill California’s High Speed Rail for her.

I’ll give McLean the benefit of the doubt (and save myself the facepalm) and just say it’s awkwardly worded in the story, but if you want the real scoop on HSR, Marsha McLean or the City of Santa Clarita aren’t the best sources. Warren Olney covered the topic a few weeks ago and gave equal time to both sides.

I was struck by two things the business owners said that related specifically to transportation and the street itself.

The first business owner said he thought Lyons could become the SCV’s own Colorado Blvd. Now if you know Colorado Blvd in Pasadena, you know a few things. 1) It’s not a very nice place to drive, and 2) it’s a very nice place to walk. So it seems to me our business owner favors Lyons Avenue still being accessible by car, but becoming much more pedestrian friendly. Which means a tad more density. And wider sidewalks. More public spaces, more benches, more ped-friendly amenities, etc.

The second business owners, the folks who own the Valencia Florist shop (and who outfitted me with many a corsage during Sophomore, Jr. and Sr. Prom- thanks!) said much the same thing. She commented that the cars drive too fast on Lyons Avenue. She said it can be difficult for people to get in and out of the shopping center.

Both of these business owners seem to favor slowing traffic down on Lyons Avenue, either to make it more ped-friendly or to ease traffic egress/ingress. It’ll be interesting to see if other owners and residents agree, because until now, the City has pursued a high traffic flow is best policy on Lyons Avenue, as traffic engineers are prone to do. In 2009, they striped a third east bound lane, forcing bicyclists to use the sidewalk (where it exists) even though traffic on Lyons hardly comes close to other three lane roads in town, like Soledad or Bouquet. The 40 mph speed limit has remained, but guess what happens when you add lanes and try to make every street flow as well as the Newhall Ranch Road? People feel at liberty to speed.

If you live in Newhall and want to have your voice heard, be sure to attend Thursday night’s meeting in Old Orchard. Read all about it here.

Hi. Yesterday I saw something I’ve never seen before in SCVland. Someone in my neighborhood was getting a parking ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant. I almost thought it was a joke, but the guy had on a uniform and was measuring the distance between the car and the fire hydrant. And he had a uniform on and an official vehicle. Later I saw him driving and my wife snapped this pic of his vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy this vehicle owner was being ticketed, but what is this, Santa Monica? Beware SCV!

Beware indeed!

The City’s parking enforcement program was approved by City Council last fall. The rational behind the program was that it’s more efficient to pay a private parking enforcement company to write citations than it is to pay a Deputy or two to do such low-level enforcement work. After the County cut back its budget on Community Service Assistants (who can write citations), the City estimated that Deputies spent some 900 hours in 2009-2010 writing parking tickets rather than busting pot-smoking teens on paseos, breaking down the doors of flophouses, arresting corrupt former Chamber officials, or pursuing pudding bandits. What a waste of resources,yes? Especially when you consider that the contract with the parking enforcement company provides 7 day a week, 10 hour a day enforcement, much more than what we got depending on the over-worked Deputies.

Way back in 2006, when this was just a baby blog struggling for readers, I went on a ride-along with a Deputy Sheriff in Canyon Country. The absolute worst part of the ride-along was the 50 minutes I spent twiddling my thumbs as the Deputy filled out paperwork and called a towing company to get an illegally parked car towed. He told me this was the second or third time the car had been cited by a Deputy. What a waste of time.

Of course, there’s also some level of revenue generation in parking enforcement too. The City’s staff report last fall said that the cost of contracting with the company was $300,000, but the program expected to bring in about $425,000.

So, beware of where you park your car, and don’t be shy about ratting out neighbors or scofflaws who park their RV (or, my personal favorite, the giant stomper trucks with 30 foot boats attached) on your street. The days of worry-free parking in Santa Clarita are at an end.