RURAL REGION SEEKING HIGHWAY 118 SOLUTION.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Daily News Staff Writer

Rural Highway 118 running through the Las Posas Valley has for years been a growing favorite for heavy trucks and commuters trying to find an alternate way between east and west Ventura County.

The road had 12 deadly crashes between 1994 and 1996 and thousands of commuters going through every day cause traffic jams along the highway - many of them taking risk as they get impatient with the slow-moving semis and tractors that also use the two-lane highway.

Although many in the small community of Somis and the city of Moorpark are frustrated and worried about the truck traffic and erratic drivers there, few can agree on how best to solve the problems.

In Somis, some want the road widened to allow for easier passing and less congestion. But others said that would be the end of the town's agricultural character.

``All the cars going through the (Highway 34 and 118) intersection is like trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle,'' said Debra Tash, a Somis resident and member of the newly formed Highway 118 Safety Task Force.

In Moorpark, residents originally thought a bypass running north of the city would solve their problems and take truck traffic off of their city's main drag. But some are now trying to come up with alternatives to achieve the same result.

For the past several years, a group of Somis residents has lobbied elected officials to do something about the hazards on the road. As a result, Caltrans introduced two projects, now in the planning stages, that it says will remedy the problems.

One will straighten the S-curve west of Mesa School Road, and the other will create a through intersection from Highway 34 to Donlan Road where they hit the 118.

``I don't necessarily want to see the highway four lanes, but I want to see it improved,'' Tash said.

But others in the rural town said that they moved to the area for the acres of fruit trees and farmland, which they believe would be lost, if not by development then by the additional traffic expected.

``I think there can be accommodations that can be made that will preserve the valley as an agricultural valley and still meet the needs of everyone who uses the highway,'' said Barbara Kerkhoff, another task force member who has been involved in the debate over the road.

Even as the Caltrans projects move forward, Kerkhoff and others are trying to come up with alternatives that would solve the problems while keeping the town intact.

One idea is to build a bypass from Balcom Canyon Road that would travel along the railroad tracks and onto Highway 34 at about Las Posas Road. It would be designed to take cars bound for Port Hueneme off the road and reduce the need to widen the interchange at the 34 and the 118.

Like their neighbors to the west, Moorpark residents are united in their concern about the highway. Their issue is the 4,000 trucks estimated to travel from the rural end of the highway through New Los Angeles Avenue to the Moorpark Freeway.

Over the years, residents, candidates for City Council and elected officials have proposed several fixes to the problem. They include putting more California Highway Patrol officers on the road and opening the truck scales more often to make it less attractive to truckers trying to avoid them on the Ventura Freeway.

But the idea that has taken hold is building a bypass that would take the trucks away from the middle of the city and divert them north to connect directly with the Ronald Reagan Freeway at Princeton Avenue.

That project is estimated in some county and private studies to cost more than $30 million.

City officials have tried to raise money for that by making developers agree to pay an extra fee to be put toward that goal. The developer of the Hidden Creek Ranch development recently committed $12.5 million to the project.

But that money was lost when voters in Moorpark rejected his development agreement in Tuesday's election, saying, in effect, that they do not want the housing project built.

Opponents of the development said there are other ways to find the money and there may be alternatives.

``Remember that the goal is to remove the truck traffic from L.A. Avenue,'' said Moorpark Mayor Patrick Hunter. ``There needs to be some healthy discussion of the best way to achieve that before we narrow our focus on one alternative. We've talked about this 118 bypass for so long, but no one has really studied whether it is feasible.''