Newport Beach Ca Transportation

The City Council has approved three proposals to ease traffic and restructure parking on the Balboa Peninsula to make it more appealing to pedestrians. Main Street will lose six metered parking spaces; the city also plans to give the avenue a face lift. New landscape will go before the council in a few months, Planning Director James Hewicker said. The three-minute parking zone in front of the post office and the commercial loading zone by the Balboa Pavilion will remain.

Time is running out on the thicket of high-tech parking meters introduced in Newport Beach last year as the weapon of choice to keep beachgoers from hogging the curbs along the city's bustling oceanfront. The so-called "smart" meters have proved to be poor moneymakers, and they elicit grimaces from police as well as many merchants and motorists. "It was a dumb idea," one city meter reader said. All in all, people clearly prefer standard parking meters, those brainless old-school workhorses.

After more than 3 years of planning, groundbreaking ceremonies were held Thursday for the Newport Transportation Center--a bus depot and park-and-ride facility for east Newport Beach. The center, at MacArthur Boulevard and San Joaquin Hills Road, will have nine bus bays for dropping off and picking up passengers and 76 parking spaces, according to Sam Hout, project manager for the Orange County Transit District. Total construction cost is estimated at $1.9 million.

Meter readers are tired of explaining them and so are shopkeepers, but partway through the test period for Newport Beach's smart meters, beachgoers slowly are growing accustomed to them and many businesspeople are delighted, despite some meter quirks. The point of the meters, which were installed for a three-month trial period in June, was to give everybody a fair share of parking time.

Several proposals for new neighborhood speed bumps, except one plan for a Corona del Mar neighborhood, will be put on hold under a plan approved by the City Council. After being faced with angry residents from neighborhoods where the bump issue has created friction, council members decided to postpone future construction projects until the benefits and problems of bumps can be better gauged.

City officials said Tuesday that residents should not be upset about a 1.3-mile section of Newport Coast Drive that will become part of a toll road in 1997. Councilman Phil Sansone said the San Joaquin Hills toll road was always planned to extend to the Corona del Mar Freeway by using the same right of way now occupied by a portion of Newport Coast Drive. Some people think that a 50-cent toll affecting access to the shortened Newport Coast Drive is a bad idea.

Back Bay Drive is now open again after more than a year of cleanup work following extensive flooding in December 1997. The work was complicated because the area is controlled by three entities--the city, the county and the Irvine Co.--and because it is a wildlife sanctuary, which required the city to get permission from state and federal agencies.

After Eastbluff residents complained about traffic in their neighborhood, the city has taken several steps to improve the situation in the area. To prevent drivers from cutting through Eastbluff between Jamboree Road and Eastbluff Drive, cars will no longer be able to turn left from northbound Jamboree onto Bison Avenue beginning Jan. 15. They will also not be forced to turn from Bison onto Jamboree where the two streets meet.

The City Council has decided not to join a lawsuit that seeks to block the conversion of a section of Newport Coast Drive to a toll road. Though council members said they oppose the conversion, they voted unanimously to stay out of the legal fray. The county's Transportation Corridor Agencies plans to renovate a strip of Newport Coast Drive and incorporate it into the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor.

A move to permanently prevent widening of Dover Drive goes before the City Council today. Councilwoman Norma Glover asked city planners to undertake the effort, which requires removing a section of Dover from the county's Master Plan of Arterial Highways. The affected section of Dover runs from its inception at West Coast Highway to Westcliff Drive.

The City Council on Monday decided to raise the speed limit on Santiago Drive to 30 mph, despite residents' protests that the increase will encourage people to speed. But Police Chief Robert J. McDonell argued that the new speed limit will make it possible for officers to use radar detectors on the street. In order for police to control speeding, they need a minimum of 30 mph to use radar detectors.

After Eastbluff residents complained about traffic in their neighborhood, the city has taken several steps to improve the situation in the area. To prevent drivers from cutting through Eastbluff between Jamboree Road and Eastbluff Drive, cars will no longer be able to turn left from northbound Jamboree onto Bison Avenue beginning Jan. 15. They will also not be forced to turn from Bison onto Jamboree where the two streets meet.

The City Council has decided not to join a lawsuit that seeks to block the conversion of a section of Newport Coast Drive to a toll road. Though council members said they oppose the conversion, they voted unanimously to stay out of the legal fray. The county's Transportation Corridor Agencies plans to renovate a strip of Newport Coast Drive and incorporate it into the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor.

Plans for several major road improvements, including widening sections of two freeways and a new interchange at Newport Boulevard and West Coast Highway, will be before the City Council tonight. The plan to widen the Corona del Mar and San Diego freeways where they intersect is part of a mitigation measure for the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, according to a report by Public Works Director Don Webb.

Plans for several major road improvements, including widening sections of two freeways and a new interchange at Newport Boulevard and West Coast Highway, will be before the City Council tonight. The plan to widen the Corona del Mar and San Diego freeways where they intersect is part of a mitigation measure for the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, according to a report by Public Works Director Don Webb.