Traffic troubles at Kanan/101

From the beginning, we were told that the objectives of the Kanan interchange improvement were twofold: to provide for better traffic flow and to improve safety. In my opinion, neither of these has been satisfied.

With respect to traffic flow, it is obvious from the daily backup of Kanan Road southbound traffic that traffic is not flowing better, and, in fact, has been dramatically impaired. Morning traffic is always backed up past Hillrise due to two factors: the fact that there is only a single lane that feeds into the 101 southbound and the number of discourteous drivers that drive up to the front in the wrong lane and cut over at the last second. I will speak to the latter when I deal with safety.

It should have been obvious to any novice traffic engineer that reducing the number of lanes that flow from southbound Kanan Road onto the 101 South from two to one would have an impact on Kanan Road. The only solution to this would be to redesign the lanes so that two lanes can feed into the 101 South.

We were told that the left turns from Kanan southbound onto the 101 southbound were a serious safety issue that would disappear with the new interchange. While the left turns have been eliminated, we now have a safety problem which is, arguably, more severe. That is the number of people that intentionally drive as far as they can in an incorrect lane and then cut into traffic to get onto the freeway south.

We also have a safety problem with the people who are heading for the freeway south and, innocently, find themselves in the right lane and have to cut over to the left to avoid hitting the barrier that is there to direct them onto the freeway northbound.

So again we have a case of significant taxpayer dollars spent on something that did not generate any benefits, only the need for additional costs to be incurred for enforcement, just to maintain the pre-existing safety conditions. Mark Grossman Agoura Hills