LOOMING TRAFFIC CRISIS BUILDING BOOM IN OUTSKIRTS WILL ADD 346,000 DAILY CAR TRIPS.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Staff Writer

Dozens of developments that would add more than 20,000 new homes to areas surrounding the San Fernando Valley in the next few years threaten to compound the problems of freeway gridlock and surface-street congestion.

The combined projects dwarf the 3,050-home Ahmanson Ranch project on the Ventura-Los Angeles county border. Yet they have moved forward with only scattered local opposition while Ahmanson has been the focus of a high-profile campaign featuring Hollywood stars Rob Reiner and Martin Sheen that focuses on potential traffic problems and the preservation of open space.

Many of the houses, condominiums and apartments now in the works are slated for the Santa Clarita Valley, part of the north Los Angeles County area expected to triple in population to 1.4 million as traffic planners talk about long-term plans for the 2.7 million new residents expected in the county by 2025.

The 20,000 new homes include units approved or under construction. In addition, plans to build an additional 14,600 homes are making their way through government agencies and a 21,000-home Newhall Ranch development is proposed for the outskirts of Santa Clarita.

Traffic engineers say each new home generates up to 10 car trips a day, which means 346,000 trips - nearly 10 times the 37,500 that would be generated from Ahmanson.

``I-5 is going to be a parking lot,'' said Lynne Plambeck, an anti-development activist in Santa Clarita.

``Everybody yells and screams about Ahmanson, but Ahmanson gave more open space, more schools, more fire departments and more parkland than Newhall Ranch. We're just in big trouble out here.''

The north county region faces more immediate impacts from various developments - for example, Stevenson Ranch adding 833 residential units, Tesoro del Valle: 1,791, Westridge: 1,755 more. The city of Santa Clarita has 7,300 other units approved.

Activists in the area have had little success in stopping projects and look enviously at the campaign organized by Save Our Open Space and other groups in Ventura County.

``I wish we had all that here,'' said Plambeck, whose group, Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, has been fighting the proposed Newhall Ranch and many other developments.

``It is a matter of you have a lot of celebrities that are affected. We just have regular, middle-class folks out here who are working very hard. ... There's not a lot of time to go and protest, or a lot of money.''

In Ventura County, Dos Vientos' 2,346 homes in Thousand Oaks were approved over the protests of a core group of activists, while Simi Valley now faces a resident-initiated November ballot measure that would cut short two proposed developments, one in one of the city's major canyons.

Population pressure

``It's scary,'' said Agoura Hills Councilman Jeff Reinhardt, whose city sits along the Ventura Freeway. ``The messages we're getting from the state are there are another 10 (million) to 15 million people coming into this state (by) 2020, you must build housing for them. We're kind of looking at each other scratching our heads saying, How do we do that?

``You do want people to have meaningful homes with some dignity. How much is too much? Have we overbuilt to the capacity of the infrastructure?''

Actor-director Rob Reiner - who lives on L.A.'s Westside, miles from the development - has joined the Ahmanson opposition because of the impact it would have on beaches and the Santa Monica Mountains, said Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch campaign manager Chad Griffin.

``If you call it a NIMBY (``not in my back yard'') issue, there are hundreds of thousands of people who live in that region. If it's NIMBYs, it's millions of NIMBYs,'' Griffin said.

He said more should be done to monitor the other developments that tally up to 10 more Ahmansons regionwide.

``We are so parochial in our planning,'' said Griffin. ``We allow L.A. County to make all the decisions on all our developments within this line that someone drew. Then, we allow someone in Ventura County (to do the same).

``It's an issue of having a vision of development, of planning, meeting the needs of housing, and balancing the issue. There should be a more broad approach.''

While regional traffic planners weigh in on larger-scale developments - the Metropolitan Transportation Authority got Newhall Ranch to agree to maintain an existing rail right-of-way for a potential public transit use down the road - they rely mainly on broad regional demographic projections for regional transportation planning.

``It's being accounted for,'' said Brad McAllester, the MTA's deputy executive officer for long range planning and coordination. ``That's how we look to the future impact on the freeway system. As we look to how to accommodating this future need of 3 million people coming to this county, that's the challenge we do face as we develop our future plans to meet that future need.''

As the lead traffic planner for the county, the MTA plans for $11 billion of new projects through 2025 that rely heavily on mass transit.

For the San Fernando Valley area, that means the new East-West Busway from North Hollywood to Warner Center, new north-south Rapid bus lines like the popular one along Ventura Boulevard and 206 miles of additional car-pool lanes around the region.

But those efforts are far short of what's needed.

The average morning rush-hour speed of 31 mph on the county's streets and roads as of 1998 is expected to fall to 16 mph by 2025. Without the MTA's current plan, it would dip to 14.7 mph.

The MTA long-range plan offers a dire warning: ``It is clear that even with our highest expectations of resources, we cannot build our way out of our transportation problems. Growth cannot remain unchecked based on the assumption that transportation services will follow.''

But others argue that the building boom could change the way we live and work, getting people to live closer to their jobs and forcing more people into Metrolink trains and other mass transit.

``It's easy to talk about all the homes and the traffic it's going to create. The alternative is the housing gets built in San Bernardino and the jobs are in the San Fernando Valley,'' said David Grannis, executive director of the San Fernando Valley Transportation Strike Force.

``How many of those units will actually reduce commutes? I've got to believe that's the case. It may help regional traffic. It may not help certain Valley streets.''

But he said increasingly car pools and public transit are coming into play. ``I have seen things that have happened in 10 years that I don't think anyone would have predicted.''

In Agoura Hills, with its $8 million annual budget, planners are embarking on a $20 million Kanan Road/Ventura Freeway interchange improvement to help fix congestion from the crush of drivers.

While the MTA will pay half the costs, the city still must come up with the other half. It's been saving traffic impact fees it collects from the developers - $2,700 per new residential unit - to pay the bill.

``Maybe if you're a big city like Los Angeles that has a multimillion-dollar budget, you just grin and bear it,'' Reinhardt said. ``You take a small city with a small budget and drop on them a $20 (million to) $25 million capital improvement. ... How do you do it?''

Higher fees sought

Anti-development activists argue traffic mitigation fees should be much higher, a move that would make many developments too expensive to build.

A spokeswoman for Newhall Land and Farming Company, the developer of Newhall Ranch, said developers - and residents - are already paying high costs for traffic improvements.

Ahmanson Ranch will have contributed $14 million on nonfreeway improvements, and has given $3.7 million to neighboring cities.

Newhall Land will have contributed $120 million to traffic improvements - mostly street improvements, but also it has fully funded the new Valencia Boulevard interchange with the Golden State Freeway.

``There are significant dollars that are being contributed,'' said Newhall Land spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer. ``But in terms of wholesale major changes that are to occur on freeway systems, it has to take on a more regional perspective as a funding source.''

A spokesman for Los Angeles County Supervisory Zev Yaroslavsky said there's little more that can be done to meet the housing needs while fighting gridlock.

``It is true that there is no regional body that vets or overrides development considerations. You can't have local control of land use on the one hand, and on the other hand subordinate those decisions to, what, another agency that might override local decisions?'' said spokesman Joel Bellman.

The cumulative impact of new development to the region has long been an issue in Los Angeles where, in 1978, a public interest law firm filed suit over land-use planning.

The result was the county's development monitoring system that is supposed to weigh each project's impact on the traffic, water, sewer, schools and libraries already in the region.

``This is a great idea, but then we get into the politics of it,'' said Plambeck, the Santa Clarita activist.

``It comes down to political leadership and honesty,'' she added. ``It's a matter of: Has it been manipulated to support one special interest instead of the general public interest?''

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TRAFFIC NIGHTMARES AHEAD

SOURCE: Daily News research