VALLEY COULD LOSE SURFACE ALTERNATES TO 101.

Byline: Eric Moses Daily News Staff Writer

The San Fernando Valley could lose another chance to relieve traffic on the Ventura Freeway.

On the surface, a proposed master plan for hillside communities in western Los Angeles County would limit new construction. But hanging in the balance is the future of travel on the Ventura Freeway between the Valley and the Ventura County line - as well as the existence of wildlife in a swath of Santa Monica Mountains parkland.

At issue is the Ventura Freeway Corridor Areawide Plan, a development blueprint for a 60-square-mile region that includes Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, unincorporated county land as well as state and federal parkland.

In terms of traffic relief, the key component would all but kill any chance two alternate routes to the freeway - Thousand Oaks Boulevard to the north and Calabasas Road to the south - would ever be built to traverse the Santa Monica Mountains.

``The roads are not doable,'' said Dave Brown, a member of the Calabasas Planning Commission. ``They haven't been done for all these years, which ought to tell you something.''

But transit planners at the Los Angeles County Public Works Department argue that the roads will be necessary in coming years when the population in Ventura County is expected to skyrocket - an estimated 31 percent in the next 22 years, according to a Southern California Association of Governments study.

Without an alternate or two, county officials fear the region could turn into Sepulveda Pass West.

``It would look like the San Diego Freeway,'' said Barry Witler, the head of the county's Transportation Planning Section.

In less than two decades, they contend, the Ventura Freeway will be forced to carry about 15 percent more cars during peak periods than it was built to handle. Plus, alternatives are needed in case it's closed for an extended period of time due to an earthquake or other disaster.

Most of the traffic is considered ``through'' traffic, automobiles traveling to and from Ventura County to the Valley and points south and east.

As it is now, the freeway is running near or above its capacity of 180,000 automobiles per day. In 2015, the average daily number of vehicles on the freeway between Parkway Calabasas and the Ventura County line is projected to exceed 210,000.

Witler and his colleagues are seemingly alone in wanting to keep the streets in the plan, and they have accused the region's planners of being provincialists.

``The area does need to accept the regional responsibility for circulation and we are not convinced that that has happened,'' said Lee Stark, a planner with the county's Department of Regional Planning.

The planners are at a disadvantage because the county lacks the power to force the smaller cities to include the roads in the general plan.

Drafters of the limited-growth plan also have a powerful ally in Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who likely will urge his colleagues to approve it when it comes before them at the end of this year or early next year.

``Anybody who thinks that punching another road through to relieve traffic on the 101 will have to answer the question, Will punching the road through become the raison d'etre for the approval of three more subdivisions?'' Yaroslavsky said.

Yaroslavsky, who represents the region, said adding more roads will cause more congestion. ``I think we have to be balanced in our approach to this and not look for every opportunity to build a new highway or a new road,'' he said.

For years, the county's highway plan has included these proposals:

Linking Thousand Oaks Boulevard from where it ends in Agoura Hills to where it picks up in county land at Las Virgenes Road.

Connecting Calabasas Road from where it ends west of Mureau Road to Agoura Road in Calabasas.

Both proposals were included in the Malibu-Santa Monica Mountains Interim Area Plan, which has guideMd regional planning since 1981, but never were built because of the estimated high cost, the instability of the hills and the fact that they cross protected parkland.

In the meantime, Agoura Hills removed an unbuilt section of Thousand Oaks Boulevard from its general plans of 1985 and 1992, making it virtually impossible to build the road through that city.

According to the county map, the boulevard was supposed to run through ``Old Agoura,'' an equestrian-oriented area of the city.

``Old Agoura is a very unique part of our city,'' said Mike Kamino, a senior planner for Agoura Hills. ``Having a roadway, a throughway, bisecting Old Agoura would certainly have some great consequences to that community.''

To the east of Agoura Hills, the road would cut through parkland purchased by the federal government 20 years ago with an eye on preservation.

The road also would sever the undeveloped corridor linking the coastal side of the Santa Monica Mountains with the ranges on the north, thereby inhibiting the ability of some animal species to repopulate, said Arthur Eck, a National Park Service superintendent.

``If we lose that corridor what we end up with is (having animals) effectively date their sister,'' Eck said. ``Animals are not going to build their own roads to cross roads that we build.''

Opposition in Calabasas, south of the freeway, is just as stiff.

Planning Commissioner Brown said extending Calabasas Road is unlikely because no developer will pay for it, and the steepness of the terrain makes it too difficult.

Brown also says a side route already exists: a winding stretch of one and two lanes consisting of Agoura, Las Virgenes, Mureau and Calabasas roads.

In discussions with the community planners, county engineers are looking for a small concession: keeping the proposed roads on the map so the option for building them remains.

``The thing that the county is aware of is that even if people today say they will accept greater congestion in the futurMe in order to preserve the environment, the people living there 30 and 40 years from now are going to be complaining loudly to the county or the jurisdiction there at the time about the congestion,'' Stark said.

Whether the alternates are ever built is another question. But options exist to lighten the traffic on the freeway.

At the top of the list is adding a fifth lane to each side of the freeway, county officials and corridor plan advocates said. However, it has not been formally proposed to Caltrans.

Others also hope vehicle traffic will decrease in the future with increased dependence on public transit and more people working at home.

``In the long term - 20, 30, 40 years down the road - at some point we'll run out of freeway capacity,'' Brown concedes. ``But at that point maybe we'll figure out how to transport ourselves in other ways.''

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MAP: Ventura Freeway Corridor Areawide Plan

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