Meet your new Laguna Canyon Road!
Well, a vision of the road, an alternative, a possible-maybe-if-we-get-funding road.
But eventually, by 2030, Laguna Canyon Road will be a real road and not a disaster.
Without the utility poles, it will go from a dangerous level of service “F” to a randy level of service “D.” Woo-woo.
But it will be much better: undergrounding of the power lines, more efficient driving, real bike lanes, ADA-compliant pedestrian paths, and a possible reversible center lane to manage peak direction capacity (think Fourth of July egress).
And no more annoying bottlenecks – or at least greatly reduced.
What’s the catch, you ask? Nothing, absolutely nothing (coy grin emoji).
We can hear you now.
“They’ve been saying this for 50 years,” you groan. “There’s no way in heck the canyon militia will stand for it.”
Maybe, maybe not.
The city is banking on new momentum after the state (i.e. Caltrans) finally approved a major milestone. Called a Project Study Report (PSR), the 654-page document was years in the making.
(As an aside, you might be wondering if in the course of this reporting we read the entire 654-page report. It took us a few days and several signature cocktails, but yes, we did, thank you.)
And that’s not all, there is a preliminary 292-page Laguna task force document that is mandatory reading if you want to pass this class.
The reports are fascinating in their level of detail for all things Laguna Canyon. For example, do know how many cars travel through the canyon every day? Roughly 36,000.
Do you know what percentage of those drivers actually live in Laguna Beach? Only 40%. We will pause to let that sink in.
In other words, 60% of all the traffic in Laguna Canyon is pass-through traffic and does not stop in Laguna Beach. Imagine what it is for Coast Highway. Our guess is 85% or more.
But back to the canyon. Did you know the accident rate is double the statewide average for a similar road?
That’s not surprising, actually, if you get those nearly daily city text alerts that say, essentially, “Accident in the canyon (again), go around because this one may take a while.”
So there will be a ton of upcoming very polite public meetings to dive into the details of the five or so road proposals.
Don’t worry, you will have plenty of time to shake your fist and howl at the moon. The city is giving you two years to get it all out of your system.
In the meantime, the City Council has approved some new funding and authorized more bureaucracy to move this project to the next step.
But make no mistake, at a minimum of $130 million, this is Laguna’s biggest project in the pipeline that has real legs.
If the city’s staff and politicians pull this off, we will take back every snarky thing we ever said. And hope that the road is good for everyone: cars, bikes, pedestrians and that dude on the Segway.
