EDITORIAL: Next act for traffic solutions

A new era of traffic management has begun for Laguna Beach.

The ACT V city maintenance yard is completed at the remote public parking lot at 1900 Laguna Canyon Road. How does this affect Laguna traffic? It clears the deck for a new Village Entrance at the intersection of Laguna Canyon Road and Forest Avenue.

The details of the Village Entrance are still being worked out, but the long standing promise of ACT V is within sight.

The acronym ACT V stands for “Abolish Congested Traffic V,” with the “V” denoting the five groups that worked to secure the canyon site more than a decade ago in the hope that it would unblock downtown traffic during the busy art festival season.

The ACT V parking lot has done just that, and its “next act,” if you will, is the linchpin of what should be another traffic solution: a 600-plus vehicle parking structure slated for the city’s main artery from the east, the canyon road.

The maintenance facility did not come about without a lot of disagreement over the use of the wilderness-adjacent property for city services.

A much-ballyhooed 2005 compromise worked out between Councilwomen Toni Iseman and Elizabeth Schneider — who stood at loggerheads on either side of the issue — paved the way for the facility to be built.

The councilwomen had apparently been induced to work out their differences by then-Mayor Cheryl Kinsman, who very smartly appointed them both to a subcommittee charged with finding a solution to the issues.

In the maintenance facility, city planners have created a tasteful structure that should serve the city well for many years.

It’s a low-key attractive building that sits unostentatiously in the small canyon. It’s in a perfect spot to house city transit buses and the fleet of summer trolleys that ply the roads during the festival season.

The two-story structure has already succeeded in moving a lot of city employee traffic away from the area near City Hall.

Now all eyes can move to the future of the Village Entrance, which has at least as many issues and concerns as the canyon site did — two of the most serious being that it is bisected by Laguna Creek and is also the site of a sewer lift station.

Nothing’s simple in Laguna. But if recent history holds, a working solution to this tricky location will be found.