Committee ready to make 17th Street suggestions

Jennifer Kho

COSTA MESA -- After spending more than a year studying ways to improve

traffic along East 17th Street, members of a city advisory committee said

Tuesday they would recommend the City Council approve a four-lane plan.

The East 17th Street Ad Hoc Committee favored one of two four-lane

alternatives with bus turnouts, raised medians and right- and left-turn

lanes. The recommendation differs from the city’s general plan, which

calls for the street to be widened to six lanes.

A majority of the committee, made up of Costa Mesa residents and East

17th Street business representatives, opposes the general plan, saying it

would be detrimental to business.

“The entire city will continue to benefit from a wonderful and special

business district because of the ease of accessibility and travel along

that street because it’s four lanes,” said Dan Perlmutter, a committee

member. The recommended plan includes “enhancements that will improve the

flow of traffic, and reduce cut-through traffic, and anything that can be

done to improve traffic flow on the street will make the street more

user-friendly.”

While one plan calls for turn lanes and bus bays wide enough to

eventually be converted to regular lanes, the one chosen by the committee

calls for narrower turn lanes and bays that would have to be widened

before they could be converted to regular lanes.

Peter Naghavi, the city’s transportation services manager, said he has

not decided which alternative he will recommend to the council, but noted

the alternative the committee selected could raise costs.

Regular traffic lanes are required to be wider than turn lanes,

Naghavi said, and, if the council decides on the narrower turn lanes and

bus turnouts and then later decides to convert the street to six lanes,

the city will have to tear out curbs.

“We try to prevent throwaway costs in case there are any changes in

the future,” Naghavi said.

But Perlmutter said the committee disapproves of the six-lane option.

“Six lanes changes the entire character of the neighborhood,” he said.

“It makes it into a highway, which is not conducive for shopping in strip

malls. The [wider alternative] is disguised as four lanes but is

definitely a six-lane plan with the work to be completed sometime in the

future. It will take more land to widen the intersections in preparation

for the six-lane plan, and that will not benefit the city.”

The committee also will recommend the city change the general plan

from six to four lanes on the street, and members decided to keep the

committee intact to be able to offer future help to the city.

The City Council is scheduled to consider plans for East 17th Street

on April 16.