RECONFIGURING WITH PAINT GAVE STREET BACK TO RESIDENTS.

Byline: GREGORY J. WILCOX

It's amazing what a little paint can do for a neighborhood's curb appeal.

Take those splashes of white and yellow spread along Oxnard Street between De Soto and Winnetka avenues in Woodland Hills. They've made some cars and trucks disappear, especially during rush hour.

But like all magic tricks there's an illusional quality to it.

They've just reappeared on other east-west thoroughfares such as Victory Boulevard, Vanowen Street and Sherman Way.

It's all by design.

This small stretch of street south of Pierce College got a new $390,000 paving job and when it was repainted motorists were confined to basically one lane in each direction separated by a generous median and bordered by bike lanes.

It was done in part because of additional commercial real estate space in Warner Center, the arrival of two big upscale apartment complexes and the revival of several shopping centers.

For example, LNR Warner Center at the northeast corner of Canoga Avenue and Burbank Boulevard added nearly 1 million square feet of product to the market and Westfield Shoppingtown Promenade has morphed into a popular entertainment destination.

The money for the street's makeover came from the state's Traffic Congestion Relief Plan, said Tom Thomas, assistant director of street services for the city of Los Angeles.

The city's Department of Transportation provided the paint job.

It makes no apologies for ending Oxnard's usefulness as a relatively easy bypass around congestion on other streets.

``Those people who live on Oxnard don't want people to use Oxnard as a bypass,'' said Ken Firoozmand, the department's West Valley District Engineer. That's because semantics play a role in traffic management.

Firoozmand said this section of Oxnard is designated a collector street and deserved to be painted narrower. This would improve the quality of life for residents by reducing speed and traffic.

The genesis for all this goes back to the Warner Center Specific Plan, a master blueprint for the huge office, residential and retail area that dominates the West Valley. Part of that plan includes the concept of neighborhood protection by moving traffic from residential streets, like this one, onto streets designed to carry heavier traffic loads.

Shirley Blessing, a member of the board of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, and Brad Rosenheim, a land use consultant, both worked on this project, which lasted eight years.

Blessing, who lives on Oxnard, thinks the revamped street works just fine.

``We're beginning to notice a little less traffic. My husband says it's significant in the peak a.m. and p.m. hours and more importantly, now you have designated right and left turns, which makes it far safer,'' she said.

Rosenheim has seen some changes, too.

More rush-hour traffic on other streets, for example. And heading east on Oxnard out of Warner Center takes longer now than it used to.

``If you're leaving Warner Center between a quarter to and 5:30, it's pretty tough,'' Rosenheim said of the new configuration. ``It's an interesting dynamic. It's one of those unfortunate situations where you try to do the right thing and work with the local community and you end up congesting the (traffic) even more.''

Gregory J. Wilcox, [phone]

greg.wilcox(at)dailynews.com